It seems like only yesterday, Metallica were bitching about Napster taking their livelihood while rolling around in piles of money, Scrooge McDuck style. It’s taken them about a decade, but they’ve finally caught on to this whole technology thing. Instead of suing their fans, they’ve launched an iPhone app, Live Metallica, that lets fans stream professionally mixed concerts.
While at any given time, the $0.99 app features the band’s latest concert streaming in its entirety, the app points back to the band’s Live Metallica website. The site has been selling concerts from 1982-present, but now users can buy single tracks. App users can stream samples of tracks, from the site, then buy them if they like what they hear.
It’s pretty innovative, in that for once, paid downloads on a iPhone aren’t coming from the Apple store. There aren’t too many other bands that would be able to do this, both from a popularity standpoint and from an innovation standpoint. As much of a punch line as Metallica were for declaring war on their fans and new technology back in the day, it seems like they’re making up for it with this. And as anyone that’s seen the band on the Death Magnetic tour can attest, they can still bring it live.
