Look out, Napster! Look out, MP3.com! A new company is entering the playing field, and it's got enough muscle to make serious waves in the digital music market. I'll give you a hint: the company is wealthy, world-renowned, and its name begins with "M."
Give up? Of course, I'm talking about Metallica. (What — you were expecting perhaps Macromedia?) The Bay Area-based hard rock band recently brought suit against Napster, the vendor of MP3-trading software, for alleged complicity in violating recording copyrights.
According to a statement from outspoken drummer Lars Ulrich, the band found it "sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is." High-minded sentiment; and yet, all is not quite what it seems here.
Says Metallica: "This band has always taken a leadership role. We have always done things differently. When someone spends as much time creating this art and having it traded like a commodity without care or permission, we felt it was important to speak out on the issue."
Interestingly enough, that last statement didn't come from Ulrich or any of the other musicians. It came from one Gayle Fine, touted as the band's "spokesperson."
It's probably no surprise these days that a rock band consists of guitar, bass, drum and spokesperson. Metallica — whose recent compilation of lo-fi cover songs was titled Garage, Inc. — isn't just four calculatedly-coiffed musicians. They're a digital media company.
Their business is the bottom line, and their stock-in-trade is intellectual property. They're content providers.
As such, their decisions are sometimes motivated more by business necessity than by artistic goodwill. For instance, in the early 1990s the band delighted fans with the announcement that it would allow its live concerts to be taped, even going so far as to sell tickets to a special "bootlegging section."
But 1998 found them filing suit against Amazon.com and other Web sites — ironically, for trafficking in bootleg Metallica recordings.
From a business perspective, it makes sense. When they announced the taping section, Metallica's self-congratulatory press releases invited comparison to another tape-friendly Bay Area band: the Grateful Dead.
But the Internet could potentially deliver bootlegged tracks into the hands of more people than any parking lot at a Grateful Dead show ever could. Facing unprecedented erosion of potential profits, Garage, Inc. got cold feet.
The explosion of music traffic over the Internet can be seen as a threat to the business model of any recording artist. Just ask rapper Dr. Dre, who has also brought suit against Napster.
He saw tracks from his Dr. Dre: 2001 album leaked to the Internet months before its scheduled release, prompting an additional round of changes before the final product hit the shelves. For a musician, that's tantamount to industrial espionage.
But rather than resist, other big-ticket acts are more willing to turn and face the strange changes — take, for example, veteran performer David Bowie. Bowie, who first cast his eye on the phenomenon of rock stardom with his 1972 Ziggy Stardust project, has little trouble accepting the idea of "performer, interpreted as media company." In fact, he's practically embraced it.
While many bands have set up official Web sites to promote their music, Bowie's new media presence only begins with his own pages. DavidBowie.com isn't just a fan site featuring exclusive, members-only content — it's also a full-blown ISP, offering "full, branded Internet or premium access customized for the ultimate experience."
And while Dr. Dre and Metallica see digital music files as the enemy, Bowie sees only new possibilities. He himself made his latest album, "hours," available to fans in Liquid Audio format two weeks before the CD version.
And when one fan posted his own unauthorized remix of a Bowie track to a Web site in MP3 format, the artist was thrilled. "If [a kid] can do that," he said, "imagine what can happen in the future."
But perhaps Bowie's crowning postmodern maneuver came in February of 1997. While Metallica's press releases hearkened back to the '60s values of Jerry Garcia, the man who was Ziggy Stardust instead took his cue from the modern, online media. He went IPO.
With the help of investment banker David Pullman, the artist launched a $55 million issue of 15-year bonds. The bonds were backed by projected future revenue on Bowie's existing catalog of recordings, like a tracking stock for Bowie's royalty payments. They offered a rate of 7.9 percent — good enough for The Prudential Insurance Company of America, apparently, which snapped up the issue in its entirety.
Lars Ulrich complains of his art being traded as a commodity, though his organization acts like a Fortune 500 company. Meanwhile David Bowie offers shares in his own output, and pays dividends. Is Bowie, then, that much more cynical than Metallica? Or is it just that he "gets it," while others like Metallica and Dr. Dre don't?
The "Bowie Bond" offering, though perhaps distasteful on the surface, was a useful tool for the artist. Bowie relinquished no creative control in the deal. In fact, he used the capital raised to buy the copyrights for some of his old songs away from a former manager.
Similarly, Bowie sees the potential in new tools like MP3, both to find his audience and also to involve them in the creative process. He recognizes that the new developments the Internet has brought aren't going away, and so attempting to stifle technology isn't the answer.
The pace of progress continues; even if Napster were to be sued out of existence tomorrow, something else will inevitably take its place.
Already Gnutella, a new technology similar to Napster, is gaining in popularity. And unlike Napster, Gnutella is Open Source, developed by numerous hands, doesn't rely on central servers managed by any one organization, and users can access its network anonymously — so once it gains a real foothold, there won't be anyone to sue.
By comparison, partnering with a less chaotic, organized service like Napster could be a real boon to artists. Just ask Limp Bizkit — Napster is helping underwrite their summer tour of free concerts.
But it's just this centralized structure that also makes Napster a target for lawsuits. Rather than a loosely-knit network of individuals like Gnutella, Napster is a business — just like Metallica is a business.
In the absence of Goliaths like Napster, the only recourse for media entities like Metallica would be to turn on the little guy. Dr. Dre has already threatened to take legal action against individual students in his recent lawsuit.
But the problem there is that the Davids in such suits are ostensibly the artists' own fans. That's not likely to garner much support from the public; and as the rapper himself suggested on his latest release, we've "Forgot About Dre" once already.
In truth, Dre's and Metallica's lawsuits are little more than short-sighted stabs in the dark. They're the work of "old world" companies, trying vainly to resist the inevitable changes wrought by the online revolution.
Instead of blaming technology for his woes, Lars Ulrich might take a cue from a true innovator, like David Bowie, who sees in technology new avenues for him and his audience to explore.
Even in a world where musicians can be seen as media companies, a rock band's real equity ultimately lies in its fans. Ulrich might win his battle for today, and block some MP3 traffic.
But in the long run, if Metallica chooses to fight its own fans rather than adapt to the changing times, he's liable to find himself — to borrow one of his own song titles — little more than "King Nothing."
