Metallica Versus Digital Music

So, is the heavy metal band, Metallica, to be applauded for their stand against digital music services, or condemned as hypocrites for conceding defeat and joining the new age of music sharing?

Years after the metal boys took on the once-free downloading service, Napster, Metallica has taken their band off to digital music land. Metallica was openly against digital downloads, calling them the death of the album format. A few years and lawsuits later, they struck a deal with Apple, making their back catalog available on iTunes.

Though Metallica had made their music available for downloading on Yahoo! Music, MSN Music and Rhapsody services prior to the iTunes partnership, this is the first time listeners can purchase a single song rather than an entire album.

A statement from the group's website said, "From the 'It's about f - -ing time!' file, comes this...Over the last year or so, we have seen an ever-growing number of Metallica fans using online sites like iTunes to get their music. So, in continuing with the tradition of offering our albums for sale online (which we've been doing for a few years through various sites), as well as making our live concerts available for download in their entirety (through the livemetallica.com site), we are now offering fans the opportunity to obtain our songs individually."

As of July 25th, each of their 10 albums are available for download, along with a handful of previously unreleased live songs, which were included as bonus tracks on Metallica's first four discs, Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and ...And Justice for All.

Still, the new, longer albums will not be available for single song purchase. According to their website, they chose the back albums for solo-song digital distribution based on length. "We chose these four because, unlike the more recent releases, we were only capable of writing 8-9 songs for each of these albums!"

Feeling as though their work, along with other artists' work, was being hijacked, the gruesome foursome waged a highly publicized legal war against Napster for the illegal file-swapping of their music. Now, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo have become hypocrites of sorts, by allowing their songs to be offered to the buying public, without purchase of the full collection of work. This comes in spite of their declaration in 2003, when the iTunes Music Store launched. The group stated that by allowing their music to be apart of iTunes, it would "contribute to the demise of the album format."

Currently, Metallica's catalog is available on iTunes, for United States and Canadian users. "This is unfortunately due to the fact that our record company overseas doesn't seem to want to play ball with us on this at the moment," the band explained on their site.

Artists who are still holding off on the digital bandwagon include the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead and Garth Brooks.