{"id":803308,"date":"2020-01-22T10:13:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T17:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=941226"},"modified":"2020-01-22T10:13:25","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T17:13:25","slug":"metallicas-kirk-hammett-on-napster-we-didnt-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/metallicas-kirk-hammett-on-napster-we-didnt-make-a-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Metallica\u2019s Kirk Hammett on Napster: \u2018We Didn\u2019t Make a Difference\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Although Metallica<\/a> were the most outspoken about the dangers of file sharing with the advent of Napster<\/a> \u2014 garnering a lot of bad press for allegedly wanting to sue their fans \u2014 Kirk Hammett<\/a> now says the group had no effect on the outcome of the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t make a difference \u2014 we did not make a difference,\u201d the guitarist recently said on the Let There Be Talk<\/a> podcast (via Ultimate Classic Rock<\/a>). \u201cIt happened, and we couldn\u2019t stop it \u2013 because it was just bigger than any of us, this trend that happened that fucking sunk the fucking music industry. There was no way that we could stop it. \u2026 What had happened was all of a sudden, it was just more convenient to get music and it was less convenient to pay for it, and there you have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Napster emerged as a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, with a focus on MP3s, in 1999. When the record industry caught on that people were sharing practically CD-quality copies of music that they would otherwise charge an MRSP of $18.99 for at record stores, they realized they had to stop the bleeding. The circulation of Metallica\u2019s song \u201cI Disappear,\u201d featured on the Mission: Impossible 2<\/em> soundtrack in mid-2000 caught the band\u2019s attention, and they, along with Dr. Dre separately, decided to stand up to the network and filed legal action against it. The metal band filed a lawsuit in March 2000, naming several users who had traded the song, and eventually Napster settled Metallica\u2019s and other suits against it. But in the meantime, Metallica became something of a villain, looking like greedy rock stars, despite the fact that they were attempting to defend artists\u2019 streams of income.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFor me, it was kind of a leveling factor,\u201d Hammett said. \u201cAll of a sudden, all of us were brought back to the minstrel age now where musicians\u2019 only source of income is actually playing. And it\u2019s like that nowadays \u2014 except that a lot of these bands aren\u2019t really playing. They\u2019re pressing \u2018play\u2019 or something. But there are a lot of bands who actually fucking play their instruments and have to play to still be a band and still fucking survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, Lars Ulrich reflected on the Napster battle in an interview with Rolling Stone<\/a><\/em>. \u201c[Our] impulsivity occasionally bites us in the ass, because we jump before we know where we\u2019re landing,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a creative environment, that\u2019s a great situation. But with Napster, we jumped straight down to \u2018Fuck these guys! Let\u2019s go after them.\u2019 And then all of a sudden, we were just like a deer caught in the headlights. I underestimated what Napster meant to people in terms of the freedom it represented. So I think that sometimes even if you don\u2019t want to, you gotta kinda just do a little bit of due diligence before you jump \u2013 at least have an idea of where you think you\u2019re gonna land.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that he was initially taken aback by the way the story turned into being about how Metallica were ostensibly targeting fans. \u201cThat was the brilliance of the other side,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was between us and Napster, and then Napster made it between us and the fans, which was a really, really smart move. That was not the intention. Napster wasn\u2019t about money. It wasn\u2019t about commerce. It wasn\u2019t about copyright. It was literally about choice. Whose choice is it to make your music available for free downloads? We were saying, \u2018Hang on. It should be our choice.\u2019 And then other people had different opinions and it became about whether you\u2019re greedy or about money. And all of a sudden it was like, \u2018Huh? What? Where the fuck did that come from? We\u2019re not greedy! Wait a minute, who changed the direction of this whole argument?\u2019 That was the part that kind of threw us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Although Metallica were the most outspoken about the dangers of file sharing with the advent of Napster \u2014 garnering a lot of bad press for allegedly wanting to sue their fans \u2014 Kirk Hammett now says the group had no effect on the outcome of the crisis. \u201cWe didn\u2019t make a difference \u2014 we did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-25 01:49:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}