Web Series To Explore The Impact Of The Internet On Heavy Metal
from the beyond-metallica dept
One thing I've always found especially fascinating about the topic of digital technology and its impact on creative industries is the way different artistic communities react. In music, this often plays out along genre lines: the hip-hop community, for example, has a very different view of internet and copyright issues than the classical music community. Thus it's always interesting to hear genre-specific opinions on these topics, where broad debates get replicated in microcosm, and interesting parallels appear.
So I'm looking forward to a new five-part web series called On The Record from the heavy metal website Metal Injection (found through the Metalluminati blog). Among the handful of topics the episodes will explore is the question of how the internet has affected heavy metal, and based on the trailer it looks like this will feature heavily in the series:
The reactions from artists and journalists—or at least the ones highlighted there—are broadly positive, and will be familiar to Techdirt readers. The heavy metal world is an interesting venue for this conversation, since for many people the genre is best-known through Metallica, its pop ambassadors, who are famous for suing Napster and being one of the first bands to take a vocal anti-filesharing stance. It's hardly surprising that their views aren't representative of the broader metal world, but as someone who knows very little about that community, I look forward to hearing from its more progressive members.
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Filed Under: heavy metal, music, technology
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Oh yeeeeah.
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It is (sadly) the same reason why the internet is so popular with pedophiles and other marginal types, because you can meet people with the same interests online that you would never have met otherwise, and get enough like minded people together to form a community.
Metal music waxes and wanes, it gets some popularity, it gets more mainstream, and then falls off the other side into relative obscurity for a while... then comes back again. During those waning moments, the internet is a good place for the smaller fan base to stay in touch.
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As Alexei Sayle Described It...
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I wouldn't have known about either - except for the cassette tape copies I got back in the 80's.
After that, I proceeded to buy everything both bands had ever done. Up until the Metallica Napster thing - after that, I didn't buy anymore or their CD's.
And man - I have: Kill them All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, And Justice for all on both Cassette (yes still) and CD. All the rest, except for the bootleg 'alcoholica' I have on one or the other.
Made me MAD that Metallica had the nerve to make MONEY off of their video that was ALMOST ALL BOOTLEG video - that the band profited off of - which I also bought.
Isn't the RIAA concerned about the 'artists' in that bootleg video???? The 'artists' who illegally filmed the video and then gave it to Metallica who then in turn created a video and sold it....
Hypocrites.
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Re:
Beastie Boys are another example, tons of free acapellas for remixing. And if you look at their last couple album releases, along with remaster releases, they were available as Vinyl/CD, high quality .MP3 or .Flac. Actually buying the physical copy gave you access to the digital copies. Then there were bundles with t-shirts, stickers, 7" singles, etc etc. The added value that Mike's always preaching about around here.
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The Internet has been great for metal...
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