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Following on from the weekend's Download Festival fun and games that gave a few lucky/in the know kids the chance to see the band up close in a tent while also denying thousands of other fans who didn't think they were even in the country on that day from seeing them, now they have more for us all...
After famously killing Napster and suing any other forms of digital downloading in sight, Metallica are getting into the free download game themselves, in a manner of speaking... The band, partnered with Seattle DSL Online provider Speakeasy have developed www.metallicavault.com, a Web site due to contain hours of downloadable live recordings, demos and B-sides, all for free.
By free, we obviously mean you've got to pay: by purchasing the band's new album 'St. Anger' ya'll get a code that allows access to the site, that on launch will feature three full concerts — 66 songs in all. That obviously means increased sales for a cd that has already been pirated so much that the release has been brought forwards from the 10th of June to the 5th, that's this Thursday, as all real fans can only get the free stuff by picking up a real copy of the album.
Copy? i meant version, you know, from the band themselves, not a dodgy bloke, please don't sue me Metallica...
Anyway, Lars had this to say to MTV News about it, see if you can spot any lies (hint; they're hidden behind piles of cash-money and bags with 'loot' written on them):
"We've always wanted our fans to experience our music online, but up until now, the existing distribution methods have not passed the kind of quality standards our fans have come to expect from us. We want the music that will be accessed on www.metallicavault.com to be the best of the best available on the Internet."
Will it work on any (real) version of the CD or only versions from certain territories and certain machines, (as with the last Massive Attack album's 'protection' software) and is the downloadable stuff then able to be fileshared? Only a few days to wait to find out...
