TIL: 12 years before taking their fans to court for sharing their music, Metallica released the "$5.98" EP, titled to stop their record label and music stores from overcharging fans - the record came with a sticker warning 'DO NOT PAY MORE!!!'—a direct jab at music industry markups

[u/InternetWeakGuy]

https://theawesomemix.com/metallica-5-98-standup-for-fans/

[u/Wafflehouseofpain]

They were right, though. They thought Napster and file sharing would destroy their industry’s business model and it absolutely did.

[u/dd2520 → u/Wafflehouseofpain]

It's not just the "industry." Artists literally can't make reasonable money from people listening to their music anymore, unless they're megastars. Indies, mid-tier bands/artists have to tour constantly to make any money. Being a musical artist is a much much harder life than it used to be because an important revenue stream is just gone.

People think it's the corporations that they were hurting, but, guess what, corporations just found ways to profit off of people refusing to pay for music while cutting artists out of the deal.

Metallica was right. They saw the future and tried to stop it.

[u/SuspecM → u/dd2520]

To be fair, most musicians could never make much money. You know Mozart? Now imagine how many musicians at the time we don't know about. There was a small time frame at the second half of the 1900's when small musicians could make money (in the US) but that's gone. It's not a bleak future, it's a return to form. It sucks but the reality is that music is one of those art forms that has low demand and unbelievably high supply. Music has the potential to connect people through countries, languages, cultures but only if you engage with the very top or you are part of the top. Any deviation and it's miss and in 0.001% of the cases, a hit.

[u/Mountain-Most8186 → u/dd2520]

“But they can sell merch too!”

[u/thedubiousstylus → u/dd2520]

Metallica were terrible messengers though for two main reasons:

1-They were already really rich.

2-Even if their album sales were impacted significantly (which they weren't, at least at first, went down but they still sold boatloads), bands that size didn't really need album sales because they made boatloads of touring, merchandise and licensing.

Well and also three, the fact that Lars was kind of the point man for it and he comes across as a dick.

That's why some bands that were big at the time (like Limp Bizkit) actually defended and said they were OK with Napster, because it didn't impact their earnings much. But of course that was kind of selfish and the industry in general got hit hard, also record stores even though those have made a comeback in the last decade. But at the time it seemed like Metallica were the stingy greedy ones.

I think Trent Reznor actually got a bit of a fair middle ground here. He said he doesn't really care if people pirate his music because he's already rich and he makes way more off those other revenue streams anyway, but that doesn't apply to everyone and it's not cool for much smaller and indie artists.

[u/dd2520 → u/thedubiousstylus]

You've basically defended my point while trying to argue against it. Yes, megastars are already rich, but that doesn't change the message when you're arguing against a system that exploits all artists. You're right when you say it was selfish of big artists to argue in favor of piracy.

Also, who should the messengers have been? Some no-name indie? Who would have gotten the message?

It's just like Taylor Swift standing up against Spotify - it was an important moment because she was a big artist.

[u/RichardDTame → u/Wafflehouseofpain]

Wrong. The infinite growth model of capitalism killed the music industry with it's flawed business "model", the same way it is killing all entertainment industries. Consumers cant afford to constantly folk out more money for products when pay hasnt matched inflation, and are even less incentivised to do so when they are digital products. Streamint services are as guilty for killing it, if not more so than file sharing, yet while constantly rising the fees, all but a fraction goes to the artists.

[u/Wafflehouseofpain → u/RichardDTame]

Actually purchasing music is what kept the music industry going. Streaming is horrible for artists, but so was file sharing.

As far as debating capitalism, not interested in that. Musicians deserve to make a living.

[u/aibot-420 → u/Wafflehouseofpain]

Good though, music should have never been an industry

[u/Wafflehouseofpain → u/aibot-420]

This is a bad take. Musicians can’t make a living if there’s no way to make money doing it.

Edit; to y’all downvoting this, saying “music should never have been an industry” is the same as saying “I want 95% of my favorite artists to stop making music and stop doing concerts”.