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Update:
According to a statement on the Metallica site, the band only just became aware that their management company was telling bloggers to take down their reviews, and they have told everyone to go ahead and write whatever they want: "Once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was "WHY?!!"
Original post:
Not that long ago, I wrote about the launch of Mission: Metallica, a new website offering a kind of "music as a service" plan for fans of the veteran metal band, including everything from high-quality downloads of the upcoming album (without any digital-rights management restrictions) to behind-the-scenes photos and videos, limited edition lithographs and so on. A pretty smart offering, in a lot of ways -- and certainly a nice surprise coming from the band that was notorious for going after Napster in the early days of the digital music revolution.
Metallica's latest move, however, seems a lot more like the Metallica of old. According to several recent reports, the band (or rather, its management) set up a "listening party" with prominent music bloggers, including the staff of UK music site The Quietus, and played them early versions of tracks from the upcoming album (expected in September). Not surprisingly, some of these bloggers wrote up their impressions of what they heard -- at which point they got nasty phone calls from Metallica's management, asking that they remove the commentary.
Why would the band do such a thing? No doubt out of concern about potential repercussions for album sales if fans get a sense from the early versions that they might not like the record. So then why play it for the bloggers at all? It's like giving with one hand and then taking with the other -- whatever goodwill was gained by having the listening party was immediately nullified by ordering the bloggers to take down their comments (which still survive in this comment at Techdirt, at least for now). Not a great PR move by Lars and the boys, but then not really that surprising either.
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Sask Langer from Canada writes: Metallica is still around? I would have thought they died out long ago with the rest of the dinosaurs.
- Posted 12/06/08 at 10:54 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
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Don Williamson from Brantford, Canada writes: Maybe it doesn't matter, but an update to your article should be noted. Metallica disagreed with their management's approach, and posted their thoughts on the Metallica website (along with links to the reviews in question).
http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=600942
These guys are intelligent business people, and have weathered worse storms than this. Try comparing them to other rock bands, and see who has the better business savy, proven success, and longevity.- Posted 16/06/08 at 9:21 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
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