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Ending its vehement hold out against digital music distribution, heavy metal band Metallica on Tuesday announced it would peddle its songs via Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes Music Store.
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich led the battle against Napster in 2000, delivering thousands of Napster user names to a county courthouse. Six years later, with legal file sharing services taking a bite out of CD sales, Metallica is changing its tune.
"Over the last year or so, we have seen an ever-growing number of Metallica fans using online sites like iTunes to get their music," the band said in a statement on its Web site.
Indeed, overall, 14.7 million digital albums were sold during the first half of 2006, according to Nielson SoundScan, compared to 6.4 million in the first half of 2005. Analysts expect the legitimate download industry to continue growing at a rampant pace over the next few years as movies enter into the mix.
Getting Its Feet Wet
Metallica is taking measured steps with its album inventory. So far, the band has released its first four albums, "Kill 'Em All," "Ride the Lightning," "Master of Puppets" and "And Justice For All," for sale on iTunes.
The albums will sell for US$9.90. To entice listeners to purchase the digital versions, the band threw in some previously unreleased live tracks on each of the albums.
Metallica had previously offered its live concerts for download in their entirety, but had resisted selling individual songs. Individual tracks from the four albums will sell for the standard 99 cent price.
iTunes Music Stores in the U.S. and Canada are the only ones that will be offering Metallica. Metallica's record company overseas "doesn't seem to want to play ball with us on this at the moment," the band said.
It's About Time
Metallica could no longer afford to ignore the numerical evidence in favor of digital downloads, according to Inside Digital Media Senior Analyst Phil Leigh.
"Metallica didn't have much choice but to license its backlog to iTunes," Leigh told MacNewsWorld. "It is pretty evident that digital music downloads are the wave of the future and the band had no real reason to be a holdout anymore."
Unlike the Napster controversy, he noted, Metallica will make money from the iTunes deal. The band can expect to generate as much profit from iTunes album sales as traditional CD sales.
The Digital Line
"The point is that over time it's necessary for Metallica to do this because CD sales are declining. The market for CD sales is just going to continue dropping. Metallica needed to come online and participate in this legitimate business," Leigh remarked.
Indeed, while physical album sales declined 4.2 percent in the first half of 2000, Nielson SoundScan reports, sales of digital albums soared by 126 percent. Overall, the music industry grew slightly by about a tenth of a percent.
Metallica's decision leaves the Beatles and Led Zeppelin among the most notable holdouts to iTunes. Leigh predicted these bands will eventually relent and join the digital music revolution.
