Lars Ulrich To Ask Trent Reznor For Music Business Advice?
from the wow,-didn't-see-that-coming dept
As most folks know, Metallica was an early "skeptic" of online music, with drummer Lars Ulrich leading the way -- suing Napster and complaining about iTunes. In many ways the band, and Ulrich specifically, became the face of the big anti-fan, anti-internet rockstar. More recently, the band has tried to change that image, working hard to embrace the internet a bit more, and even shrugging off the fact that the band's new album was leaked online. However, those early actions really hurt the band's reputation, leading many fans to boycott the band and refuse to buy any of its new music.Still, even as the band (and Ulrich specifically) has been working over time to try to rebuild the band's online credibility, I didn't expect this: Ulrich is apparently excited to pick Trent Reznor's brain about music business models:
"We're doing a bunch of shows with Trent this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what's on his radar."That's certainly quite a shift, considering that Reznor has pretty fully embraced online distribution, including file sharing and things like BitTorrent. So, now we just have to see if Ulrich actually learns some of those lessons.
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Filed Under: business models, lars ulrich, metallica, music, nine inch nails, trent reznor
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Great for Lars
Thing is, it needs to be organic. Repetition doesn't always work. You have to be creative with the whole model. That's where Trent excelled.
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Re: Great for Lars
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Re: by Ima Fish
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Step 2 give away douche bags with Lars face printed on them.
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May I be the first to say...
FSCK Metallica
They ahd their chance, and they pissed all over the fans and the technology.
Have they forgotten that Metallica's original fan base was built on TAPE TRADING?? I knew MANY people in 84-86 that got their first taste of Metallica from an "illegal pirate" tape. Many of them became paying fans.
Metallica stopped being worth a god damn after Sandman. The Napster fiasco just nailed the coffin shut. Those greedy has-beens can go piss up a flagpole.
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File System Consistency Check
/dev/Lars contains a filesystem with errors.
/dev/Metallica contains a filesystem with errors.
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Re: File System Consistency Check
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Metallica Boycott
Any change in their stance on online music is just a blatant money grab in my opinion. They hated the idea when it first came out because they were afraid they would lose money, and not they're not making any money, so they're warming up to the idea again.
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boycotts
It's for this reason that really a lot of the major labels are never going to get back a fair portion of their business because people have sworn it off entirely. The world is far from forgiving.
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Is it a noticeable impact, or just a very loud minority screaming on the Internet?
I seem to remember an episode of The Simpsons where Comic Book guy comes out of the movies and says something like "Worst Star Wars [or Star Trek or Whatever] ever. I will only watch it 17 more times tonight." Is that what happened w/ Metallica's album / concert sales? Or did they suffer a real loss.
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"The primary--not the only, but the primary--function of a record label is to act as a bank," Ulrich told the Times. "When you're fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don't need to rely on record companies as the banks...We're doing a bunch of shows with Trent this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what's on his radar."
Sort of confirms my theory - when you are rich enough and well enough known, you don't need the record companies as much.
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Not really. Unless you count the opinion of a guy who was vehemently defending them not so long ago despite already having become a multi-millionaire... you know, the guy who destroyed much of his band's respectability and marketability in the process?
I always wonder with your wild claims Harold, what is your metric for measuring success? It seems to me that you instantly dismiss anyone who isn't already stinking rich or a household name as being unsuccessful. Do you realise and accept that there are other ways of measuring success?
If so, you may be surprised how many successful artists there are who don't use major record labels. It's not always about having a big bank account and a gaggle of paparazzi following you around...
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Re: Re:
Using well known, well often acts to claim (as infamous joe does) "Masnick's Law strikes again." is just dishonest. It's only the proof of the old adage "the rich get richer".
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Re: Masnick's Law
A point which is rendered nonsense by any amount of evidence collected on this and other sites.
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Which claims do nothing to prove or disprove the viability of a business model. If anything, it shows again why record labels are in trouble - their biggest assets don't need to sign their horrendously one-sided contracts any more.
"Using well known, well often acts to claim (as infamous joe does) "Masnick's Law strikes again." is just dishonest."
You haven't bothered reading what "Masnick's Law" actually refers to or why it was coined, have you?
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Did I miss anything?
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1) It's not used much by Mike (the "guru"), more by commenters
2) It's not ever-expanding or ever-shifting, it's well-defined
3) It has nothing to do with owning success or disowning failure
Since it seems you really don't know, Masnick's Law states that if a musician is described as having any success with a business model involving giving away music, somebody will claim that that model can only work for X type of bands. X is usually "big", or "small", but sometimes "medium" or perhaps even some other type of metric.
You're kind of jumping the gun since you're claiming that any business model that Metallica might in the future experiment with, and might have any success with, would only work for bands that already huge and famous.
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re: Masnick's Law. The law isn't about "Free will always triumph over evil," it says that whenever we talk about this or that free modle, or this or that artist embracing such a modle, someone will say it only works for big/small/rich/middling/obscure/choose-your-adjective bands, but not others. If you page through older Techdirt posts you'll see this come up all the time in comments. When Trent succeeded with free, it's because he was well known. When GirlTalk succeeded with free, it was because he was relatively unknown.
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im pretty sure the ppl who started listening to Metallica with "Master of Puppets" and "And justice for All" stoped listening to them after the Metallica album.
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oh no....
It's just *WRONG*!!!!
:P
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Re: oh no....
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Re: Re: oh no....
Why do I get the impression that this Youtube Video is about you?
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Re: Re: Re: oh no....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy
Watch out for the eye in the pyramid!
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Lars Still Sucks
For him to even "learn" something for Trent Reznor is like having Gollum study magic from Gandalf when all he's focused on is the damn ring! Lars = Gollum in my opinion. Little toady pisshead.
Oh yeah, Metallica still sucks too. Maybe Lars could learn to play the drums someday too but then Satan would have to start bundling up due to Hell freezing over.
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Silly Sheeple!
Give me money!
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It's Official
Lars remains a douche.
Metallicops still suck.
Mike, mysteriously, does not give them enough credit for the current Internet/music war.
Master may be top 5 metal album ever, but they have been dead to me for over a decade.
Did I leave anything out?
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He's lost a lot of money by fighting his fans. But if Metallica embraces free, is it over for the recording industry?
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And since he keeps arming us with more and more reasons to trash him, the bandwagon is still moving way too fast to get off.
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Numbers? Yeah, numbers
You should know better, Jeffry. This is Techdirt - the land of wild claims not backed by evidence such as hard data.
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Comment
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Many comments quote my opinion of Lars.
This means Metallica fans will still be shelling out cash for the music in the future.
Lars, Trent's not going to be your business model guru if you're still intent on believing product = cash.
Replacing one bank with and even more idiotic one won't restore those fans you lost years ago.
And, for the record, you will never get me to return. Ever.
You're the damn thief, you pompous, arrogant ass.
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Learning from Reznor
However, I was amused by the comment; "So, now we just have to see if Ulrich actually learns some of those lessons."
Before he pulled all the shenanigans discussed, I had never heard of Lars Ulrich, nor had anyone else I know of - now, thanks to all the discussions, I have, so now is a good time for him to change his model.
Pretty smart guy, sounds like - start of infuriating people until they all know you, then switch to another model.
Funny that people would fall for it, but then ......
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Re: Learning from Reznor
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- fired from the band?
- Napster Rules tat with logo?
Thoughts?
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