The battle Metallica will lead to their obituary (and how it impacted our lives)

Hoy, cada vez que un artist se queja de las bajas cifras recibidas por streaming, su (justo) claim es un eco de la demande judicial que enfrentó a Metallica con Napster, el sistema P2P para compartir digital archives que cambiaría para siempre la historia de the music. Or rather the story of how we listen to, buy and enjoy musical productions today.

“It’s something that will be in my obituary,” Lars Ulrich told the Huffington Post a decade ago. Since that incident with seismic repercussions for the industry – which began just 23 years ago, on April 13, 2000, when the band sued Napster – the quartet’s drummer has been haunted by a ghost who associates him with a greedy desire and excessive desire to protect their heritage at all costs.

But is the scope of this competition so black and white?

Ulrich himself said it quite understandably in 2013. Napster was smart to label the authors of Puppeteer wealthy dinosaur rockers, clumsy with technology and blind to their future power, only looking for more and more money to support their wealthy lifestyle. A premise that has spread like flamethrower among the aforementioned Napster users, mostly middle and lower class university students.

Lars did, however, score a point in his favor that keeps transcending himself, blaming that his anger has nothing to do with the money, but rather with controlling his catalog. Being able to decide, as an artist, whether or not to put works freely accessible to his fans online. “We have never objected to our fans sharing recordings of our shows,” he said at the time.

We must remember that in 2000 we were at the dawn of the Internet. Downloading a song via a P2P service can take up to half an hour, and an album much longer. . Connecting via modems attached to the phone line offered slow, choppy service that was prone to drops and interruptions -especially if someone else in the house wanted to use the phone-.

Very different from the current conditions that make possible the existence of audio and even video streaming services. ; or attend live performances via YouTube or through platforms such as Mandolin, where tickets can be purchased to enjoy exclusive performances in real time.

Metallica wasn’t the only one battling a college dropout like Shawn Fanning, lord and master of Napster. The RIAA itself (Recording Industry Association of the United States) also did it before Metallica or other names that had also joined the complaints, like Dr. Dre.

However, the media impact of this confrontation between Lars and modernity is such that it appears more like the solitary combat of a dinosaur than a sign of the times. The musician also didn’t do much to calm the waters among his new fans who used the new technology available, as at the 2000 MTV Awards he starred in an overplayed faux commercial where he unexpectedly introduces himself into VJ Marlon Wayans’ bedroom and proceeds to take all of his belongings, from his soda can to his girlfriend, all protected by the sharing loophole. At the end of the plaintive video, a voice-over stamps: “Napster, it’s nice to share when it’s not about its stuff.” In the background it sounded nothing less than I disappearthe song that started all this legal uproar.

Metallica might never have heard of Napster if it weren’t for the fact that an unmixed version of said track, recorded for the soundtrack of mission impossible 2leaked months before the soundtrack was released and ended up playing on twenty radio stations.

“My manager (Cliff Burnstein) called me to say this leak was about Napster,” Lars said. For the band, the big difference between trading bootleg concert tape recordings or making tapes for friends was the scale and speed (at the time, speed seems like a joke today) with which the song reached thousands of users in record time. “It’s not about the money, as Napster cleverly put it. It’s about being in control.” Creative control versus damage control. In the lawsuit, Metallica requested that 335,000 users be blocked from the service.

Although those who at the time were using the service to download the track weren’t exactly former Metallica fans, but rather the second generation of followers -those born in the 80s- the significance of the distinction is essential to understanding the impact this fact has had on the industry.

The band’s most prehistoric fans grew up with very different consumption formats. Much less conducive to faithful lossless copying than compact discs and digital audio files, LPs and cassettes are by definition collectibles. The advent of CDR recorders, alongside P2P platforms, made possible a new kind of hacking that made a symbolic shift towards the disposable.

Victory for copyright infringement made possible, therefore, another reality, protected by a legal solution to the problem of digital recordings but in long-term fine print: Steve Jobs and the advent of iTunes and the Internet. ‘iPod was a strategic move that laid the foundation for streaming. Charge per song and design a high-end device for the portability of the new millennium. Bands supporting Metallica and bands – shrewd, numerous, seeking new audiences – against a claim still valid 23 years later.

When a current pop multi-seller like Taylor Swift blames Spotify’s low payouts; when Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West and Rihanna grace Tidal; and even when a rock institution like Neil Young decides to pull their entire catalog from the streaming colossus’ archives as a tool to express their displeasure at sharing a platform with Joe Rogan’s podcast, the event each of those events refers to is always at this litigation pioneer.

If in the big leagues, where most of the income comes from touring with exorbitant budgets, where this hype around a futile percentage seems the same, it’s the other side of the coin, in the sphere independents and always chimerical. do it yourself that the paradigm shift and the shockingly low monetary revenues offered by streaming make artistic work more than a professional or recreational act, a kamikaze work.

In July 2001, amid the battle for control, the effervescence of the (artistic) ego and the plastic media storm, Ulrich spat prophetic words during one of his court hearings before the Senate. in the face of the rise of funding and rescue alternatives such as Bandcamp and Patreon: “Also remember that my band Metallica is lucky to have a good life because of their work. Most lucky artists earn a living wage and need all possible sources of income to make ends meet, nothing else matters.

Eventually, in 2001, Napster struck a deal with Metallica. Ulrich, at the time, was reassured: “I think we’ve solved the problem in a way that works for fans, artists and songwriters,” he said.

“Our fight wasn’t about the concept of music sharing, everyone knows we’ve never been bothered by our fans swapping tapes of our concerts. The problem we had with Napster was that they never asked us or other artists if we wanted to be part of their company. I think this deal will create the protection we needed for musicians from the company.”

Over time, the percussionist also lowered his stature to what happened: “I wish I had been more prepared for the shit storm we got into,” he admitted in 2014. “I don’t regret attacking Napster, but it seems strange to me that for a lot of folks, this has become our legacy, because, to me, it’s a footnote,” he concluded, and ended a fight that seemed to be endless.