Kirk Hammett defends suing Napster in new interview
Subscribe
X

Subscribe to Mixdown Magazine

Kirk Hammett defends suing Napster in new interview

Stemming back to April 2000, Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster, an early peer-to-peer file sharing service, after an early demo of an unreleased track named ‘I Disappear’ appeared on the website, triggering a move by several other artists to sue similar services and resulting in Napster’s financial liquidation. Now, amidst an era heavily dominated by streaming, Hammett holds true to the motives of the band in suing the piracy service, discussing the matter with Swedish program Nyhetsmorgon and expressing his belief that Metallica will be considered to be on the right side of history retrospectively.

 

“It didn’t do us any favours whatsoever,” said Hammett. “But you know what? We’re still in the right on that – we’re still right about Napster, no matter who’s out there, who’s saying ‘Metallica was wrong.’ All you have to do is look at the state of the music industry, and that kind of explains the whole situation right there.”

 

 

Elsewhere in the interview, Hammett also elaborated on the music industry’s emphasis upon streaming music, proclaiming himself to still be an avid listener of records: “There was a time when the streaming thing was kind of weird… I don’t care what anyone says about modern streaming and whatnot, it’s never going to sound better than vinyl.” You can watch the full interview above, or if you’d rather see Metallica covered with a trash can replacing the snare to emulate Lars’ much-hated St. Anger sound, click here

 

Brush up on your knowledge of Napster’s role in the history of music streaming here.

 

Image via Jeff Yeager.