It’s taken a while but someone has come out and said that Metallica were right all along in their fight with Napster at the turn of the century.
That someone is Charlie Benante, the drummer with fellow thrash icons Anthrax. In an interview with the Irish Times Bentate started off bemoaning the fate of the modern musician. “We get taken advantage of the most out of any industry. As artists, we have no health coverage, we have nothing.
"They fucked us so bad, I don't know how we come out of it. You'd probably make more money selling lemonade on the corner."
Bentate revealed he doesn't subscribe to Spotify. “I think it is where music goes to die. We have the music on there because we have to play along with the fucking game, but I'm tired of playing the game.
And when asked about Metallica's public battle with Napster in 2000, Benante saluted the band for the stance they took. "They were absolutely right about it. You see where it went. All those people who said, 'Fuck Metallica. They are rich bastards'. They were protecting their art, their intellectual property so that some asshole does not come along and take your art.”
"They make the money while you just make the art and you just give it away. People don't know anything about this. Until you have lived the way we live and do what we have done, then you can comment on it."
For those who don’t remember – in 2000 Metallica took legal action against Napster, a turn of the century peer to peer file-sharing service, over copyright infringement. Metallica won in court, but in many ways it was a pyrrhic victory.
At the time it did considerable damage to the metal icons’ image – Metallica were seen as the overbearing multi-millionaires stopping the kids sharing music with each other. At the time few fellow artists stuck their heads above the parapet to support them. File-sharing and illegal downloading were seen as cool and groovy; nobody wanted to be seen as fusty old Luddites.
In Benante’s eyes, it was a turning point in the gradual devaluing of music. “Nobody did anything about it. They just let it happen,” he said. “There was no protection, no nothing. Subconsciously this may be the reason why we don't make records every three years or whatever because I don't want to give it away for free.
"I take music very seriously and what I do and what I write is very personal and, for someone to take it is not right. It is like I pay Amazon $12.99 a month and I can just go on Amazon and I can get whatever I want. It is basically stealing. It is stealing from the artist – the people who run music streaming sites like Spotify."
