Metallica vs Napster, Pt. 2 - 2011

Listen to Part 1 and the original audio source from Spotify here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/5badde12

Gustav Soderstrom: [00:00:00] So nearly a decade after Napster shut down, Lars Ulrich got another unexpected call from his manager cliff. We 

Lars Ulrich: [00:00:05] got a call from cliff again, saying that Sean Parker wanted to talk 

to 

Gustav Soderstrom: [00:00:10] us.

I'll let Sean and Lars tell the rest of the story from 

Lars Ulrich: [00:00:13] here. 

Sean Parker: [00:00:14] So I finally was able to a meeting and they said we want you to come up.

We want to meet on our turf, come to our studio up North of San Francisco, where they've been operating for decades.  I was very nervous. They said, come alone. Don't bring an assistant. Don't bring anyone, come by yourself, 

Lars Ulrich: [00:00:33] Cliff encouraged him to come alone. And,  he showed up at HQ in San Rafael and, came in and was brave walked in through the door.

And there were the fourth members of Metallica. 

Sean Parker: [00:00:43] I'm walking into this room full of people who I've been in litigation with, and I've never met and they've never met me.  And I'm way out numbered. Like  I don't know what I'm walking into, , is this some sort of, am I going to regret?

I was sweating profusely, it wasn't even that hot. It was just like a normal. Cool day in San Francisco. And I just remember feeling like clammy and just thinking I'm like, what am I, what have I gotten myself into? Because this has all become very real now, 

Lars Ulrich: [00:01:14] obviously.

None of us are assholes. None of us are nasty people. Hi, how are you? Come on in. Nice to see you. Would you like a beverage? Like some cheese, some coffee, whatever. We're trying to make him feel comfortable and obviously. It was pretty clear that he was I don't know, nervous, uncomfortable, 

Sean Parker: [00:01:30] whatever somebody I and I walk in and, they're all they take me to this room kinda just like a nondescript conference room with a bunch of Metallica branded merchandise everywhere.

And. They're all sitting around the table, just waiting. And I go around and introduce myself, but it's like not a normal, it's not a normal introduction. Because we have no idea where this conversation is going to go. And the first, I don't know, hour was almost like a group therapy session.

Lars Ulrich: [00:02:02] And she came in and we try to make them feel at home and be respectful. And we had some very good healthy discussions about the past about his view and how he felt about everything that had happened in 2000, 2001. And then we talked about our experience and our version of those events.

And even though. We agreed on some things. And I think we very much felt that both of us were unprepared for what happened and making it up as we went along to the best of our ability and we said, we were quite open about that. We agreed to disagree on certain elements of it, but I think it was very respectful.

Sean Parker: [00:02:43] But when he when we got talking about what we were really feeling like, what did it feel like, to live through that kind of scrutiny and what did it feel like for him? And he made it really clear that it really hurt him that we took down all those Metallica users and I said, I kinda did that to you.

That was my. That was like, that was definitely a calculated move, to try to punish you guys for. For what you did. And then Lara said, this one was a street fight, Wilson's nothing personal. We're just two rival gangs. It was a bra. And I said, yeah, it's just, I was just 19 at the time.

So you guys were a lot more mature and really successful. And I felt powerless. And so we had this sort of kumbaya, like group therapy session and I feel like I teared up a couple of times and. Somehow out of that process, I had this realization that, so I, we had been so vilified by some, but also embraced by others.

And we were at the center of this maelstrom and Metallica was equally, had put themselves in the center of it and our experience of being in the middle of this media moment and dealing with the positive and negative ended up having way more in common with each other. Then. Then let's say if I met a random Napster fan on the street and they said, I used to download a hundred hundreds of songs on Napster.

I loved Nasser was so great. They didn't live through the street fight. So th there's this realization that I had a lot more common experiences, shared experiences with Lars than I did with most people. 

Lars Ulrich: [00:04:07] There's a word you learned, that's not necessarily part of your vocabulary when you're 19 years old and full of Spock and that's the word empathy.

And so when you start understanding things from another person's point of views, your adversary, in this case, it helps a lot. And I felt a kindred spirit and Sean. And so to have the dialogue, to be able to get the points of view across, to be able to express how we ended up. In that street fight and why we ended up in that street fight and help be willing.

It was for us to pick that street fight and then get a chance to sort of 10 years later. Just explain our points of view and get that out there and get a chance to do it the right way felt so satisfying.

music: [00:04:52] Not 

Gustav Soderstrom: [00:04:52] long after this meeting, Sean and Loris appeared on stage together for the first time at a press event for Metallica officially announced that they were going to add their full catalog to Spotify. And the fans loved it in 2019 alone, Spotify to stream Metallica over a billion times, Metallica gone from poster child for the war on piracy to messenger of the digital revolution, not a half bad ending to that back alley brawl.

Right. .