#warning: it was very tiring to write this so it's gonna be chokefull of grammar horrors

[daddy-ul]

Since you’re a Lars fan do you believe that Lars was right about Napster

Ah, isn’t this ask the dream of every Lars stan? /sarcasm

My dear duder, I can totally see that you are genuinely asking this bc you are curious, so I’ll give you two answers: the one I want to give (1) and the one you are expecting to receive (2) from someone who, in theory, likes the man in question enough to know abt the debacle.

They will be both sincere, at time sarcastic, passionate, but never aggressive.

1.

“Napster? Is it a napkin american brand or something? This european ass doesn’t know” is my standard go-to, bc IT’S BEEN 20 YEARS. ENOUGH.

You called me “a Lars fan”, and tbh the best thing I can do as his fan is... not engaging with it. Because it has been 20 years, everything that could be said has been said, and the man can’t take it anymore. It’s almost never posed as a real question but more as a dig, as a way to extrapolate scandal, a reaction, views or whatever.

2.

Under the cut - it’s gonna be long - you’ll find my actual thoughts abt it, bc ofc i have thoughts abt it.

The thing is that I dont think most people even know what actually Napster is about, at least for Metallica.

Long story short: Metallica does a song for a movie, they are still tweaking it and suddenly it’s on the radio. It’s I Disappear. Metallica (the band, the management etc) goes wtf????? How?

In 2001 Napster was about control. Nothing more, nothing less.

🥕 Argument 1: “It’s about the money! Lars Ulrich is a greedy moth--”

Rebuttal: Nope, it’s the 2000s, Metallica is a fucking juggernaut, they sold so fucking much in the years prior and after that Jason Newsted still lives confortably with all that money, without having to work constantly.

Also, these are the dudes who let you tape their concerts back in the day and nowadays they give you a professional mix of your concert for free with the ticket. PROFESSIONAL MIX. Do you know that mixing requires money and time? They could easily not do it. They do, and i fucking love it bc I have forever my concert in digital form and with a good sound.

🥕 Argument 2: “He was an ingrate! He wanted to attack the fans! To sue them! To--!”

Rebuttal: yeah, I know where you get this from but it’s also not true. This is the only point of the story where I think Lars was on the wrong side, and the man himself admitted that.

What really happed was: Napster said “we cant do anything bc we cant know who downloaded what”, and they were lying, and Lars was so irritated by that, that went and with a fucking car full of paper with names on it, read out loud ppl names that downloaded from the site. Because OF COURSE you can know who is who with IP addresses. And Lars said it was only a show of force, a “do you think we are fucking fools? stop lying” and not a “I will come to your house and demand money”. It really went out of hand, he was too much in the heat of the moment, he regrets that move, bc of course it was interpreted like that, even if he didnt absolutely want to come after the fans.

🥕 Argument 3: “But Lars--”

Rebuttal: STOP SAYING LARS. SAY METALLICA, FFS. This is the thing that piss me off the most: it 👏 was 👏 not 👏 Lars 👏

Okay, it was Lars, but he was Lars on Metallica behalf. He was not a rogue agent of Justice. Lars doesn’t do stuff like that on his own. It was a group decision. Metallica chose to fight for it and Lars, as usual, chose to be the spokesman. But most people just hate Lars... why? I cant even take you seriously if you drool over James Hetfield bc he is “so cool” but then you go on hating Lars for Napster. You are just not making any sense. Hate ‘em all at least, lol!

>>>>> Why do I say that it was about control?

a) The man himself admitted it.

b) have you ever heard them talk? Everything is about control with them, bc control grants you freedom. Like, they have their own record company just to produce their shit themselves. Nobody ever talks how they fought Elektra to get back their masters (and again Lars was on the front for that). They want to do it their way, they always do.

From 2000!Lars POV it went like this “how come our song is out on some site or whatever when we havent even completely finished it yet? Who gave them the right?”

Look me in the eye and tell me that any artist would be fine with that.

So, then it escalated so fucking quickly, but 2000!Lars didnt know what duststorm he was rising. I dont want to paint him as a hero or whatever, he admitted that back then he didnt know how big and complicated the thing was, he learned it along the way.

Nowadays the music landscape is completely changed and I dont think my opinion on it has any value bc I’m not an expert and I know so little about it. But I read different articles about how hard it is to make music for a living now.

I could go on and on (i just cut out a paragraph that compared what making money in the music industries was about for Queen in the 70/80s and what it is now), but I’m tired of thinking in english, so I’ll cut this short and make it sweet:

I believe that artists deserve to be paid for their art and I also believe that downloading some songs is not the end of the world. Yes, these two things dont contraddict each other bc the world can contain such complexity.

Support the artist how you can!; if everyone does that, it will be fine at the end.

EDIT:

The most insightful, short comment I found was made by kirk a couple of years ago.

They told him "see? Now everyone understands the Napster thing! You were right, thank god you won."

But he said no, no we didn't win.

I agree with him.