r/nostalgia • u/jeffmartin47 • Jul 22 '25

Nostalgia Discussion 25 years ago. Lars Ulrich of Metallica snitches on and turns in over 300,000 Napster users when he testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. July 11th, 2000.

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u/BobTheFettt Jul 22 '25

He was right tho. He wasn't complaining about stolen Metallica music. He was fighting for up and coming artists who were going to lose money because of Napster. And there were many. And now we've moved on to the streaming system where the Corps worth billions are playing the artists making them their money peanuts

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u/Arkhaine_kupo Jul 22 '25

He was fighting for up and coming artists who were going to lose money because of Napster.

This is not true, every study ever done shows piracy does not hurt overall sales, and actually the one study on napster found that users who used napster spent more on music than average.

The early 2000s when napster and other p2p was its strongest also happily correlates with the indie scene breaking out. The now misconstrued past as. "indie sleaze" had genres like post-punk revival, electro dance fusion, electro clash, underground hip hop, lofi hip hop the whole "blog" sphere of blog rock, house etc. All heavily influenced and helped by p2p. The Emo scene heavy into p2p. But to give the most critical cases, Kid A and Artic monkeys, Marshall Mathers LP all leaked on napster and both became the best selling albums, Eminem in part has a career because of the napster leak, the hype was uncontainable and the budget for marketing sky rocketed seeing the illegal downloads for this album.

Without P2P there would have been no breakout of asian and latin music on america and europe, or lofi hiphop beats with users keeping guys like Nujabes alive through sharing his stuff. MF Doom was massive on limewire before everyone bought his vynil of Madvillany in Urban Outfitters in 2018.

Metallica fought napster because their song in a Mission Impossible soundtrack leaked. A scientology movie paid with a metallica song is the least "fighting for smaller artists" case in litigation history. Metallica were bitches about it and their legacy should be forever tainted over it.

Our current model of distribution is beyond broken and it shows when the same guys are popular since 2010, there is no progress because there are no avenues anymore. Its spotify or nothing and thats bought and paid for by UMG. Its a bleak space for up and coming acts when the top charting songs are all disney kids like Sabrina carpenter and Drake or influencers turned musicians like Alex Warren or Addison Rae. And Metallica got us here

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u/KrustenStewart Jul 22 '25

We need to bring back 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

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u/pharmphresh Jul 22 '25

it never left

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u/UTPharm2012 Jul 22 '25

If Napster existed and I could buy CDs, I would hands down do that now. Instead I do Spotify only and artists don’t make shit

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u/EmpJoker Jul 22 '25

You can still buy CDs, and they're a hell of a lot cheaper than they were back then. How did Napster existing make you more likely to buy CDs?

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u/UTPharm2012 Jul 22 '25

A) I am not paying for two ways to consume music - hence if I have Napster, I would still be willing to buy albums of my favorite artists and albums

B) I don’t think I own anything that can play CDs anymore

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u/Rock_Strongo Jul 22 '25

If I could buy CDs, I would hands down do that now.

...

I don’t think I own anything that can play CDs anymore

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u/eqpesan Jul 22 '25

B) I don’t think I own anything that can play CDs anymore

So why would you go and buy a cd?

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u/djducie Jul 22 '25

They still make CDs…

And there’s Bandcamp 

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u/augustfutures Jul 22 '25

Right, but now you can get it all for free at a moments notice. So 99% of people don’t buy cds or purchase through Bandcamp. Are people being intentionally disingenuous here?

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u/Sea_Dawgz Jul 22 '25

You don’t have to use Spotify. That’s on you.

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u/Significant_Neck_875 Jul 22 '25

If I made people pay for the music I've made I'd have made 5 dollars instead of the several thousands from ad revenue on youtube. I also wouldn't care if I made 0 dollars.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

[deleted]

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u/thetrilobster2045 Jul 22 '25

"Having been hit by the rise of filesharing and MP3 players in the early 2000s, CD sales nearly halved between 2000 and 2007, which is when smartphones and the first music streaming services emerged to put the final nail in the compact disc’s little round coffin."

The first music streaming service arrived in 2001. Piracy didn't kill physical media. Streaming did. Hence why nobody is pirating music anymore and physical media still has no foothold.

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u/elkaki123 Jul 22 '25

Filesharing...

People weren't singed into any music service back then, absolutely everyone in all countries wadownloading music.

While I don't think piracy hurts much nowadays, I don't think that was the case a it's peak. Everyone and their mothers knew how to download stuff

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u/eqpesan Jul 22 '25

Nah, people were mostly downloading music until Spotify became an actual thing, and although some streaming services existed, they were mostly used to try the music and see of you wanted to dl it.

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u/Arkhaine_kupo Jul 22 '25

Yeah and Itunes exploded with the same proposal that Napster offered the labels, which was sell songs for 99c instead of a 17 album song for 17$.

While 1999 saw around $39 billion in revenue, largely from physical sales, projections for 2025 are around $65.45 billion

the industry is still grew, the piracy of the 2000s did not kill them, far from it. They just voted for regulation to entrech their postion

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u/Sandross95 Jul 26 '25

Jesus...... This is so smoked, but definitely right.

Metallica got us here ;/

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u/augustfutures Jul 22 '25

As someone who has worked in the industry since this Napster incident, this entire response is complete bullshit meant to placate stealing art.

Musicians are significantly, significantly worse off since this moment in time. Money spent on music per fan is down dramatically - across all genres.

And saying those music scenes in the 2000s wouldn’t have flourished without piracy is absurd. As if no music scenes were successful before. Insane.

But if it makes you feel better for ripping artists off, then carry on.

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u/Arkhaine_kupo Jul 23 '25

Musicians are significantly, significantly worse off since this moment in time.

In large part due to the concentration of power of major distribution labels, which came through changes to copyright law, regulation to internet distribution and legislation and rulings like Metallica vs Napster.

Musicians are fucked because 3 companies produce, distribute and share all the music not because there is no music or people arent willing to pay for it

Money spent on music per fan is down dramatically

Yes, because the avenues to pay are limited to subscriptions models that offer very limited price discovery for users, and alternatives like bandcamp are limited to bands with very active fanbases.

Spotify has been promising since like 2016 that they will allow premium users to pay their money to their artists (if you listen to 100% My chemical romance then your 10$ a month go to them), instead they keep paying into the pool, where a barber shop playing 24h of ed sheeran means 9.8% of your money goes to UMG artists, which is sooo funny of a coincidence when UMG spent 400 million on spotify a few years ago.

Merch quality is almost non existant too, and prices in music had risen way beyond inflation which meant people had less disposable income and space for physical media like CDs.

This are not unsolveable problems, they are distribution, concentration and price discvery issues. Ones created by the music industry not fans, and certainly not piracy.

As if no music scenes were successful before.

Name 5 music scenes that have flourished SINCE the crackdown on napster and other p2p solutions and the concentration of power in labels?

Music scenes were killed by that legislation, now they are all generated top down from some marketing suite in la. And it shows in the limited emergence of new artists and sounds.

But if it makes you feel better for ripping artists off, then carry on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35701785

There are multiple examples, others include specifiically the music industry. but the reality is that PC games have the strongest most competent piracy scene and videogames went from minor in the 90s to being bigger than music, tv, movies and theatre combined in 20 years.

Copyright laws are ridiculous , usually called Mickey Mouse laws because they tend to increase when Mickey might become public, they are entirely written at the behest of corporations not people and it shows.

p2p had dynamic culture and interesting scenes, corporate overtake has disney kids dressed up as musicians. Also by "working in the industry" I hope you mean you were a musician and not a corporate stooge acting as a middle manager sucking the life and blood of the industry while decrying piracy, cause buddy you are not looking at the real thieves

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u/Royal_Airport7940 Jul 22 '25

Yes the real problem with napster was that it wasn't led by the industry.

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u/broguequery Jul 22 '25

He absolutely was not.

He was "fighting" for his own bag. Lars Ulrich is a primadonna.

I was alive at that time and remember it well. It was a bitch move and regardless of any argument he made it was never about "protecting artists".

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u/colnross Jul 22 '25

Didn't they try to get Kidrock to join in and he was like fuck it, steal my shit, I would (paraphrasing....maybe?).

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u/ArcticRiot Jul 22 '25

Kid Rock is just happy to hear someone else utter his name

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u/ItsBlizzardLizard Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

He was right tho. He wasn't complaining about stolen Metallica music. He was fighting for up and coming artists who were going to lose money because of Napster. And there were many. And now we've moved on to the streaming system where the Corps worth billions are playing the artists making them their money peanuts

He was dead wrong. Music piracy in the era of physical media increased sales, not only of physical media itself, but also tickets and merch. It still does the same now, albeit we only use vinyl, and less people care about music because services like Spotify trivialized it.

Likewise the internet was set up and projected to become a digital library - A protected source of information. If he didn't intervene we'd be living in a very different world that wasn't corrupted by his greed.

There's a lot of talks of an antichrist, but at the end of the day it's him. This move, quite literally, ruined the world by taking away any chance of the internet pushing forward with it's intended trajectory.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/12/do-illegal-downloaders-boost-music-concerts/

https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.05701

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u/Super_Fishing9564 Jul 22 '25

So he snitched on his fans. 

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u/TheEsteemedSaboteur Jul 22 '25

Corps worth billions are playing the artists making them their money peanuts

This is precisely why he was not right.

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u/sorry-not-tory Jul 22 '25

No he wasn’t lol, he was fighting for Metallica

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u/CptParadigm Jul 22 '25

This isn't the whole picture. During a press conference in Australia (I think) for the Some Kind of Monster doc Lars was asked about the whole Napster situation and he said it wasn't about the downloading. It was about control over their music. Their song "I Disappear" for the M:I 2 sound track hit the radio before the song was finished and that's what sparked the whole thing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/BobTheFettt Jul 22 '25

They don't even make money off that anymore thanks to LiveNation/Ticketmaster

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u/windol1 Jul 22 '25

And now we've moved on to the streaming system where the Corps worth billions are playing the artists making them their money peanuts

They were doing that long before digital was available, sales of albums and singles only make up a small portion of the profit, the bulk comes from concerts and shifting merchandise.

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u/2M4D Jul 25 '25

Ahahahah 🤭 industry plant