Metallica's New Album Death Magnetic Leaked Online

Metallica's first studio album in five years, Death Magnetic, was recently leaked online more than a week before its scheduled release date of September 12^th. Metallica, known for their rigid stance against illegal downloads of their music during Napster's early years, seems to be taking a hands-off approach to the illegal downloading that is currently taking place with their new album, Death Magnetic. More about the completion of the new Death Magnetic album can be found here.

In the early heyday of online music piracy Napster was the favored method of illegal downloading, and Metallica was the most downloaded property. Since the fan fallout of the band regarding their legal action against Napster, Metallica seems to have taken great strides to embrace the digital medium.

With Death Magnetic, Metallica has offered online sneak peeks of the new music for months. The past several weeks, Metallica has offered bits and pieces of the Death Magnetic songs on their own website at Metallica.com, click here to see the free online material.

Metallica has gone so far as to offer the first single from Death Magnetic for paid download. On their website's homepage, Metallica even offers a free viewing of their first video from the Death Magnetic album.

Still, that is not all.

From the Metallica website, fans can even listen to other songs from Death Magnetic, in their entirety, free of charge.

After all of the steps that Metallica has taken to embrace the digital medium, Death Magnetic still managed to be leaked, and heavily downloaded, shortly after completion of the album. Yet, Starpulse.com reports that Lars Ulrich of Metallica had nothing negative to say about the Death Magnetic leak to the Live 105 radio station on Tuesday and quoted, "Everybody's happy. It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy." The entire quote can be found here.

Fans that cannot wait for the official release of Death Magnetic from Metallica on September 12^th are overjoyed with the album's availability online, even it is illegal to download it. On Metallica's fan forums, you can find eager down loaders happily justifying their illegal activity with reasoning that since they have already purchased the Death Magnetic box set, which is on its way, then it is ok to conduct a download of the leak. You can read more about fan reactions to the Death Magnetic leak at Metallica.com or you can just click here.

Love them or hate them, Metallica's new album is possibly the most anticipated release of the year and is sure to spark debates for months to come.