IT IS FINALLY OVER
December 8, 2012 9:13 AM   Subscribe

Metallica ends Napster feud: "Metallica has announced its entire back catalogue is to be made available on music streaming service Spotify, ending a 12-year feud with Napster co-founder Sean Parker. Drummer Lars Ulrich appeared on stage with Mr Parker, a Spotify investor, to discuss their bitter legal battle that took place in 2000."
posted by marienbad (69 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
But have they changed their stance on fire?
posted by Lorc at 9:14 AM on December 8, 2012 [15 favorites]


But have they changed their stance on fire?

Have they every really been consistent on that anyway? At one point they want you to jump in it; at another they want you to fight it. They've always been fire flip-floppers.
posted by LionIndex at 9:17 AM on December 8, 2012 [14 favorites]


Be excellent to one another.
posted by Artw at 9:19 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lars probably thought he'd get to meet Justin Timberlake and was disappointed yesterday onstage.
posted by inturnaround at 9:21 AM on December 8, 2012 [7 favorites]


They've always been fire flip-floppers.

I think they pretty conclusively settled on "dabbajabbazaa" as their long term position on this issue.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:21 AM on December 8, 2012 [5 favorites]


When reached for comment on this momentous occasion in pop music history, the nation's youth replied "Who?"
posted by griphus at 9:23 AM on December 8, 2012 [44 favorites]


Wow, remember Napster? Remember waiting hours to download one song—and that was revolutionary?

Decades from now, when historians of music and copyright write the story of how we stumbled out of the music-as-a-physical-object model, Napster will be one of the early chapters.

(and the story will sound very similar to the ruckus around live vs. recorded music in dancehalls in the 20s & 30s, or the introduction of player pianos, or "amateur" music-making in the 1900s…)
posted by LMGM at 9:24 AM on December 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Wow... And only slightly over a decade too late. Way to go!

I'm really looking forward to still never giving Metallica a single dime of my money.
posted by markkraft at 9:24 AM on December 8, 2012 [14 favorites]


Napster of Puppets

I don't know what that means, either.
posted by zippy at 9:24 AM on December 8, 2012 [9 favorites]


Fiiiiire baaaad!
posted by loquacious at 9:25 AM on December 8, 2012 [8 favorites]


Wow, remember Napster? Remember waiting hours to download one song—and that was revolutionary?

The revolutionary part, IMO, was the centralization. Beforehand you could get MP3s from Usenet or Geocities and Tripod sites, and IRC, and AOL chat bots, but being able to load up a single program and look for a song rather than rely on Infoseek or Altavista or have to learn the ins and outs of new protocols/bot servers was amazing.
posted by griphus at 9:31 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Napster!
Exploiting me!
You should not stream,
You should not download!
Trapped on a shelf
Vinyl my only frienRRRRRRAAARRRGGH
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:31 AM on December 8, 2012 [30 favorites]


slsk is the only thing that ever came close to replicating the Napster experience.
posted by griphus at 9:34 AM on December 8, 2012 [13 favorites]


So I dub thee, bro, forgiven.
posted by cortex at 9:37 AM on December 8, 2012 [15 favorites]


If I recall correctly, Napster's entire catalog at its peak was only something like 3-4 terabytes. You could now store the entire thing for less than $500-1000 on a few large hard drives. That blows my mind.

It's also kind of crazy I have more mp3s on a tiny little netbook than could be stored on the first private shared MP3 server I ever met. Some people have the same amount of storage on an iPod now. (Approximately 50 gb.)
posted by loquacious at 9:37 AM on December 8, 2012


This is pretty cool. Metallica's music was a big part of my teenage years (and this was in the early 2000's, a decade after their best work!) Getting all the physical CDs was an epic quest - I still remember the day I finally bought Kill 'Em All, then listened to all the albums straight through. Yeah I had all the tracks off Napster already, but the disc with all the artwork was it's own experience. Hopefully this move by the band makes their really good stuff more accessible to another generation.
(The new Spotify page with all the albums arranged out is pretty classy too!)
posted by Wulfhere at 9:37 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


modern music P2P sharing sites/software still can't match the insane selection that was available on Napster.

Indeed, I've got about eighteen identical version of Gin and Juice done by everyone from Phish to Weird Al.
posted by bondcliff at 9:38 AM on December 8, 2012 [27 favorites]


I remember having to pore through countless websites in hopes of finding something interesting to download before Napster came along. I couldn't choose just anything since it'd take a hour per song. Say what you want, but I was able to find the most obscure stuff on there (most notably helping my dad download the collected works of Yogi Yorgesson). Try finding that on Spotify.
posted by fishmasta at 9:47 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Next up, Metallica's cover of "Money Changes Everything."
posted by spitbull at 9:58 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


This feels as genuine as mormons and gays.
posted by M Edward at 10:03 AM on December 8, 2012 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure Lars was the Metallica member who was sitting in the back booth of a Pensacola Waffle House back in the early 90's one night when I walked in to have a cup of coffee and sell Avon to the third shift waitresses (I formerly worked there.) As I walked in I had noticed a man standing beside a cab in the parking lot and erroneously thought that Lars was the cabbie, inside having a bite to eat. Apparently everyone else in the halfdeserted restaurant were as ignorant about his identity as I was-at least till he came up to pay the cashier and somebody dashed up, fawning and asking for an autograph, etc. Until that moment the poor fellow had been able to enjoy peace, quiet, and a decent cup of Waffle House coffee unmolested.

The rest of us didn't figure out who he was till the band dude left and the gusher told us who he was. Turns out the man standing beside the cab outside was the cab driver patiently waiting for his famous customer inside.

(I wonder if he could have used some Avon aftershave. I guess we will never know.)
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 10:07 AM on December 8, 2012 [3 favorites]


Me-who-llica?
posted by The Deej at 10:07 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


My favorite borkface musical act, fishmasta!
posted by dr_dank at 10:07 AM on December 8, 2012


Once AC/DC gets on spotify, I'll finally be a happy man.
posted by Renoroc at 10:09 AM on December 8, 2012


But I've already downloaded all their good stuff.
posted by elizardbits at 10:23 AM on December 8, 2012 [4 favorites]


XXX Britney Spears Metallica Redhead Blink 182.mp3
posted by lazaruslong at 10:31 AM on December 8, 2012 [16 favorites]


At least the Luddites were motivated by actual need.
posted by Decani at 10:34 AM on December 8, 2012


I knew I should have hitched my wagon to Dave Mustaine at 16 instead of these assholes.
posted by spicynuts at 10:37 AM on December 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


spicynuts, are you sure about that?
posted by photoslob at 10:41 AM on December 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


"Say what you want about it being slow—modern music P2P sharing sites/software still can't match the insane selection that was available on Napster."

I think what this was, really, is that Napster (and many others that came after it, including DirectConnect and slsk) allowed you direct access to everything in someone's music directory, with all the random one-off songs, bootlegs, etc. that came with it.

The difference now, with private bittorrent trackers like what.cd (the new incarnation of oink) which I think is the largest repository of music in the world , is that everything has to be standardized, of a certain quality, have had a proper 'release' etc. This severely limits Shiina Ringo bootlegs.
posted by legospaceman at 10:44 AM on December 8, 2012 [3 favorites]


I knew I should have hitched my wagon to Dave Mustaine at 16

That's a strange way to spell Scott Ian.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:50 AM on December 8, 2012 [3 favorites]


That's a strange way to spell Scott Ian.

That's a strange way to spell Chuck Schuldiner.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:52 AM on December 8, 2012 [5 favorites]


eighteen identical version of Gin and Juice done by everyone from Phish to Weird Al.

Its The Gourds!
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 10:56 AM on December 8, 2012 [6 favorites]


Napster settled with Metallica and Dr. Dre in 2001.

This is a typical Sean Parker publicity stunt.
posted by helicomatic at 10:59 AM on December 8, 2012 [4 favorites]


Yawn. Let me know when they remaster ...and Justice For All.
posted by Ber at 11:07 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Say what you want about it being slow—modern music P2P sharing sites/software still can't match the insane selection that was available on Napster.

I have a bootleg of Ringo Shiina covering Radiohead's "Creep" that I got off Napster. No idea where it's from, haven't seen it since, any any service, legit or otherwise.


Huh...well I still use soulseek (does that make me out of date?), and this popped up as soon as I did a search for it. I seem to remember regularly finding obscure stuff on soulseek that I never found on napster.
posted by the bricabrac man at 11:13 AM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


You'll know when it's remastered when you see me out on my lawn disemboweling myself.

Let not that album be ruined the way Mustaine ruined Rust in Peace when he 'remastered it.'
posted by TheRedArmy at 11:14 AM on December 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Also I was disappointed that there was only two sentences in the article relevant to the title of this post.
posted by TheRedArmy at 11:15 AM on December 8, 2012


zippy: "Napster of Puppets

I don't know what that means, either.
"

Something like this
posted by symbioid at 11:18 AM on December 8, 2012


I think the last time I felt compelled to make this observation was the Dick Clark obit thread, but the Mayans were right about 2012.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:21 AM on December 8, 2012


Torben Ulrich's response to the announcement.*

If only.
posted by helicomatic at 11:26 AM on December 8, 2012


Trailer for Alex 'Bill from Bill & Ted' Winter's documentary on Napster, Downloaded
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:53 AM on December 8, 2012


Well, clearly NOBODY clicked my cryptically titled link...
posted by Artw at 11:54 AM on December 8, 2012


Next up on Spotify, John Philip Sousa.
posted by tommasz at 12:06 PM on December 8, 2012


wow, remember Metallica?
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 12:13 PM on December 8, 2012


I know I'm supposed to snark at this because it's Metallica and they're sooooo not cool anymore, but you know what? I actually like a lot of their stuff, up to and including Metallica (aka the Black Album), and I'm glad they've come to their senses on this. Really, I think bands are shooting themselves in the foot by not putting their material up on streaming services.

I mean, I know it's unthinkable to us that a kid would grow up never having listened to Pink Floyd or the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but if you're a teen in 2012 and get most of your music from streaming services, there's actually a good chance of that happening.
posted by Afroblanco at 12:27 PM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Napster was revolutionary, but the P to P golden age was Audiogalaxy.

Miss you, my friend.
posted by sourwookie at 12:38 PM on December 8, 2012 [12 favorites]


modern … sites/software still can't match the insane selection that was available on Napster.

I have a bootleg of Ringo Shiina covering Radiohead's "Creep" that I got off Napster. No idea where it's from, haven't seen it since, any any service, legit or otherwise.


Grooveshark is the heir to the throne.

You're welcome.
posted by zippy at 1:12 PM on December 8, 2012


Napster led to my "I just like free shit and thats not cool" epiphany. If only other people had the same experience.
posted by Justinian at 1:14 PM on December 8, 2012


Fuck Metallica. Fuck Lars Ulrich. Before them our networks prided themselves on openness, we have 64K ports through which you can send your data and we won't touch it aside from making sure it gets from one place to another. Then crybaby Lars comes along screaming his brains out with lawyers in tow. Then we had 64K-1 ports through which you can send your data and we are now obligated to peek and poke into your data and tell you what you can or can't send. It only takes 64K Lars to completely annihilate the internet one port at a time. Fuck them.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:37 PM on December 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Dittoing the fuckings of them. But Lore Sjoberg put it better than I can, back in 2000.
posted by JHarris at 1:47 PM on December 8, 2012


Metallica lost a ton of goodwill from their fans with Napster and as soon as it was pulled down Audiogalaxy had taken up the slack in an even more effective way. Digital distribution is no big deal in -almost- 2013, it's a fait accompli.
posted by ersatz at 2:14 PM on December 8, 2012


loquacious: "Fiiiiire baaaad!"

God did I love these animations back in 2000. You can see the original flash animations on this page, which is itself a flashback to the turn of the millennium.
posted by dd42 at 3:03 PM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Say what you want about it being slow—modern music P2P sharing sites/software still can't match the insane selection that was available on Napster.

I have a bootleg of Ringo Shiina covering Radiohead's "Creep" that I got off Napster. No idea where it's from, haven't seen it since, any any service, legit or otherwise.

Napster was crazy.


Shit, that brings me back. I apparently still have a file called "Sheena Ringo - Koufukuron(etsurakuhen).mp3" on my computer, through something like 6 hard drive changes, that I downloaded back in 1999. Sadly, my copy of the German techno remix of "Rubber Ducky" is lost to the sands of time.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:32 PM on December 8, 2012


PhobWan...I am pretty sure I have that Rubber Ducky techno remix on another hard drive around here somewhere. I'll see if I can find and post it. It's so awesome.
posted by m0nm0n at 3:33 PM on December 8, 2012


The spirit of 1999 lives!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:36 PM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


The one and only!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 4:19 PM on December 8, 2012


Insignificant bollox.
posted by ZipRibbons at 4:31 PM on December 8, 2012


One of my college friends was a huge Metallica fan. The kind of guy who used to bitch about the kids who didn't know any of the old albums and would have to watch guys like him to know when to throw up the devil sign and start banging their heads during the concert. When Metallica started the whining about Napster, he swore them off. He pointed out to me the irony of an anti-piracy stance from a band that used to have a dedicated bootlegger section in the concert hall to ensure that people recording the show would get the best audio possible.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2012


He pointed out to me the irony of an anti-piracy stance from a band that used to have a dedicated bootlegger section in the concert hall to ensure that people recording the show would get the best audio possible.

I find the Grateful Dead boring, but their policy of allowing people to directly plug into their equipment to record live bootlegs was just awesome.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:42 PM on December 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Wow, I'm surprised that no one broke this out yet:

Money good. Napster BAD!

(youtube version)
posted by NortonDC at 11:05 PM on December 8, 2012


I have a bootleg of Ringo Shiina covering Radiohead's "Creep" that I got off Napster. No idea where it's from, haven't seen it since, any any service, legit or otherwise.

Was it this?

I apparently still have a file called "Sheena Ringo - Koufukuron(etsurakuhen).mp3" on my computer

Was that this?

In my experience, YouTube is the new Napster.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:41 PM on December 8, 2012


Audiogalaxy was amazing.
Quite why it was so amazing I've never known, but there you have it.
I miss it.
posted by Mezentian at 1:12 AM on December 9, 2012


The one and only time I went to a 'proper' gay nightclub I was haunted by the site of a drag queen in full Vegas showgirl outfit (just because, I suppose) dancing with a bald guy in a kaftan to what I suspect is the same version of the "German techno remix of "Rubber Ducky".

Even if I wanted to go back, I couldn't.
The magic would have been broken.
posted by Mezentian at 2:08 AM on December 9, 2012


Wow, I'm surprised that no one broke this out yet:

Money good. Napster BAD!

loquacious, up thread. Watching it now to maximum 4am drunken goodness.
(just flipped back and wtf is Elton John doing?)

ps - ArtW, learning about that documentary has been the best part of this thread for me!
posted by mannequito at 3:49 AM on December 9, 2012


Well, clearly NOBODY clicked my cryptically titled link...

Yes, well, ahem... just er sharing it.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:03 AM on December 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Audiogalaxy was amazing.
Quite why it was so amazing I've never known, but there you have it.
I miss it.


Because in addition to its superior downloading engine, it was all about discovery. Because of Audiogalaxy I have favorite artists to this day I would have yet never heard of and would not have in my life otherwise.
posted by sourwookie at 9:28 AM on December 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


As Steve Albini pointed out during a lecture a while back, Metallica came out of the underground metal scene of the 80's which was predicated heavily on tape trading. There used to be people who would show up at shows with 50 tapes of a good album to trade with people in order to hear new stuff.

That was the horse-and-buggy grandpappy to the Napster ecosystem. So for Metallica to put so much effort into killing it was a sad indication of how little self-awareness any of them had.
posted by lumpenprole at 12:28 PM on December 9, 2012


The band's mettle was bound to go soft someday.
posted by argonauta at 3:10 PM on December 9, 2012


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