Lars Ulrich To Ask Trent Reznor For Music Business Advice?

from the wow,-didn't-see-that-coming dept

As most folks know, Metallica was an early "skeptic" of online music, with drummer Lars Ulrich leading the way -- suing Napster and complaining about iTunes. In many ways the band, and Ulrich specifically, became the face of the big anti-fan, anti-internet rockstar. More recently, the band has tried to change that image, working hard to embrace the internet a bit more, and even shrugging off the fact that the band's new album was leaked online. However, those early actions really hurt the band's reputation, leading many fans to boycott the band and refuse to buy any of its new music.

Still, even as the band (and Ulrich specifically) has been working over time to try to rebuild the band's online credibility, I didn't expect this: Ulrich is apparently excited to pick Trent Reznor's brain about music business models:

"We're doing a bunch of shows with Trent this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what's on his radar."

That's certainly quite a shift, considering that Reznor has pretty fully embraced online distribution, including file sharing and things like BitTorrent. So, now we just have to see if Ulrich actually learns some of those lessons.

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Metallica Still Struggling With Embracing The Whole File Sharing Thing

from the no-interview-for-you! dept

While Metallica is claiming (this time around) they don't mind that the latest album is being shared online, someone forgot to tell the band's representatives. TorrentFreak notes that the band's European record label, Universal Music (in the US, the label is Warner Brothers Records) has canceled the band's scheduled interview with a Swedish newspaper after a reviewer for the paper reviewed a remixed version of the album that he admitted he had downloaded via The Pirate Bay.

Universal's claim was that this is "totally unacceptable" seems destined to backfire. This is only going to provide a lot more attention to the fact that there's a different remix of the album available online that many people find better than the official version. Plenty of other artists like and encourage others to remix their music, because it tends to get fans much more involved with the music and can help attract new fans while making existing fans more connected to the band. For all of Metallica's talk of really embracing online fandom this time around, it keeps showing that it puts up roadblocks all around, rather than really connecting with the fans.

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Lars Ulrich On Metallica's Latest Album Being Leaked Online: It's Fine, We're Happy

from the what-have-you-done-with-the-real-lars-ulrich? dept

We've noted that Metallica has basically spent nearly the last decade trying to recover from the damaged reputation the band brought on itself when drummer Lars Ulrich freaked out about Napster and started suing. While the band has been trying to become more online friendly with its latest album release, you still had to wonder how Ulrich would react to the album being leaked online before the official release date. Some might assume he'd pull a Guns N' Roses and try to send the FBI after the leakers -- but, instead it looks like Ulrich has learned at least part of the lesson: don't freak out at your fans for music getting online, even before the official release. In fact, he seems almost mellow about the leak:

"It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy."

It's tough to tell if he's legitimately "happy" about these fans, or if he's just learned enough to grin and bear it for the time being -- but it's nice to see that he's at least learned something since the Napster debacle.

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Metallica Says It's Sorry About Review Takedowns; Blames Management

from the always-management's-fault dept

Mathew Ingram alerts us to the news that the band Metallica has responded on its own website to the controversy over representatives from the band demanding reviews of the band's latest album get taken offline. The band's response is basically to blame its management company:

We were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was "WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record. . . that makes no sense to us!" So after a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at Q Prime to 20 push-ups each, we figured why not take matters into our own hands and just post the links here on our site.

And, with that, they linked to the reviews. While plausible, the whole thing sounds sketchy at this point. It seems like a weak cop-out to say "oh, it was our managers' fault" when the band has had so much controversy concerning how it has interacted with the internet community. Besides, even this response rings hollow. The band only seemed concerned that the management team took down "mostly positive reviews," not the fact that it took down reviews. It's nice that they have now linked to the reviews, but the fact that this happened in the first place still seems like a problem.

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Metallica Still Doesn't Get It: Forces Early Reviews Of Latest Album Offline

from the have-they-ever-used-the-internet? dept

While Metallica has been trying to appear more internet friendly these days, it sounds like the band still has a lot to learn. Representatives of the band invited a bunch of music journalists and bloggers to a "listening party" last week to hear tracks off its upcoming album. Attendees weren't asked to sign any kind of embargo or non-disclosure form. So, as you might expect, some of them went home and wrote up quick reviews based on what they heard. And that was the point at which Metallica representatives went around demanding that these early reviewers take down the reviews, claiming that the songs they heard were an early mix of the album, rather than the final cut. If that's the case, then they shouldn't have played it for journalists -- or they should have at least required a non-disclosure agreement. To go around forcing journalists to remove their reviews of music played for them by a Metallica representative is simply ridiculous. Not only that, but it wasn't even as if the reviews were bad. Last time we wrote about Metallica, we noted that the band was still suffering from the hit its reputation took in 2000 when it sued Napster and various colleges. Pulling stunts like this only makes sure that its reputation will continue to slide.

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Reputation Is A Scarce Good... As Metallica Is Learning

from the oops dept

On Thursday, we wrote about Metallica's latest foray online, where it's attempting to build a community around its latest music. Given Metallica's history of attacking Napster all the way back in 2000, we expected there to be some pushback, but what was really stunning was how many of the comments were from people (many of whom had been big fans of the band) still pissed off about Metallica's actions, and refusing to have anything to do with the band. We weren't the only ones to notice. Wired had a story on Metallica's efforts and discovered exactly the same thing. The vast majority of the comments were vehemently negative. Clearly, Metallica really tarnished its reputation by its actions eight years ago, and it's still paying for it.

This brings up a good point, that we've mentioned in the past in the comments, but not so clearly in a post. A person, organization, band or company's reputation is an important "scarce" good -- and once damaged, it's quite difficult (though not impossible) to rebuild the shattered goodwill. When talking about what would happen in a world without copyright, for example, people often say "but in a world without copyright, couldn't someone just copy your own creation and pretend they were their own." The answer is yes, but they do so at the risk to their own reputation. If the news comes out that the person/organization/band/whatever was taking others' works and not giving credit where it was due, that would harm their reputation. And, as Metallica is learning, a tainted reputation can have serious long-term impact.

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Metallica Tries To Embrace The Online Musical Experience -- Gets Halfway There

from the it's-a-step dept

Among folks who follow the news about copyright issues and online music, the band Metallica is rather infamous. After all, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was the first (and most vocal) musician to come out swinging about how evil Napster was. The band was the first to sue Napster (and some universities for failing to block Napster) back in 2000. It also spent many years complaining about iTunes -- though the band eventually gave in two years ago.

However, this isn't to say that the band hasn't been willing to at least experiment with online music, often in somewhat creative ways. Way back in 2003, while other musicians were jumping on the iTunes train, Metallica did a surprising deal with DSL provider Speakeasy, offering Speakeasy customers who bought a Metallica CD access to other special content including "live recordings, demos, b-sides and other content." In other words, they actually gave people a reason to buy the CD -- but oddly targeted only at the small number of Speakeasy customers.

Given that, perhaps it isn't that surprising that Metallica has now come out with a new website that tries to embrace online music. The new site, Mission Metallica, actually comes out of Ethan Kaplan's group at Warner Brothers Records. Kaplan is the guy we were talking about last week who is hopefully leading Warner in the right direction on music.

As Kaplan notes, the important thing with the new site is that the music is part of the overall experience. The site (in some ways similar to their old deal with Speakeasy) offers a ton of additional content concerning the making of Metallica's latest album and various other things, like contests to win tickets to shows. It also puts in place many of the other aspects of the business model we've been discussing, including a tiered offering a la Trent Reznor and Jill Sobule. That is, the band is offering a variety of options to let people pay for actual value beyond the music.

But... of course, it stops just short of actually making it all the way there. That's because the band isn't releasing any of the digital downloads for free. It still wants people to pay for the downloads -- even though freeing up those downloads would likely attract more people to all those other options (the band, obviously, would disagree, but given Metallica's reputation as being the slayers of Napster, they might be surprised at what a total shift would do for them). It's encouraging that the band has adopted many of the important aspects of recognizing the importance of the experience surrounding music, but it's disappointing that they haven't made it all the way through to the logical conclusion of where that model leads.

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