Metallica Shakes Hands with Napster

Band makes entire catalogue available to download

For those who know the history of Metallica and Napster the news today will come as a great surprise as the band has put its entire collection of songs on the service. Many will say Metallica finally figured out how huge online music has become.

To keep some objectivity, the fact that Metallica is making their songs available on a legal download site is not quite a shock as they're already on iTunes and Amazon. However, what can’t be denied here is the symbolic significance of the deed.

Back in 2000, when Metallica was turned into the poster band for the wrangle between the music industry and its fans, the whole deal began when drummer Lars Ulrich personally delivered a huge printout of the names of those who had been sharing Metallica tracks on Napster to the company's headquarters.

Now, Ulrich says the band might be primed for a digital release similar to those of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. Metallica has one record left on its Warner Music Group contract: "You know, this is our last record under contract with Warner, so we're looking at how we can embrace everything," confirmed Ulrich, who during a Record Store Day appearance in an interview to Rolling Stone stressed the fact that the band already allows fans to purchase MP3 and FLAC versions of recent live shows and freely download older shows.

Well, will be watching to see how this new approach of the band will be shaped up and, of course, how that intriguing looking Death Magnetic album (due on September 12) will sound like.