“ Sad But True ”: Why Metallica ’ s Fans Continue to Fail Them ( and Not Vice Versa ) Twenty Years After the Napster Lawsuit
INTRODUCTION
In a 2012 YouTube interview , Gene Simmons was asked
outright what led to the demise of the music industry that was in its hedonistic heyday in the 1970s when his band KISS , and other heavy-hitting acts from that golden era of music , forever changed the landscape of rock-and-roll . In his cocky rock-star demeanor , he emotionally exclaimed without hesitation , “ The record industry is dead because of the fans ! They killed it ! And what you have now is chaos ” (“ Gene Simmons ”). Simmons was reacting to a set of questions from the interviewer that were tangentially related to the phenomenon of online file sharing that became popular in the late 1990s , when Napster dramatically transformed the manner by which fans in the heavy metal scene�as well as other genres�obtained their favorite music .
From its onset , however , Simmons and other heavy metal heroes , such as drummer Lars Ulrich from the mega-metal band Metallica , were not buying the surreptitious digital platform , which Napster touted as music “ sharing .” These musicians and a handful of others saw through the veneer of Napster ’ s marketing efforts , which were ridiculously embarrassing attempts to obfuscate the illegality underlying its sneaky business practices . No�these musicians recognized early on that file-sharing websites and the software invented to use them serve only to create a digital atmosphere and a cultural attitude that encourages fans not to share , but to steal the music created by their favorite bands . And , now�almost twenty years after Ulrich led Metallica in an all-out legal copyright battle against Napster�stealing music is what the so-called “ fans ” continue to do , with neither consequence nor conscience , using existing programs , such as Bit Torrent and The Pirate Bay .
3