Spotify is not playing around about becoming a real media force. Besides streaming your favorite music they are also making a foray into the video entertainment field. The streaming service has made a documentary about Metallica’s formative years.
The description of Metallica: The Early Years:
Metallica: The Early Years celebrates penpals, the birth of thrash metal, heavy-riffing cellists, and the origins of one of rock’s most influential bands. Focusing on the period from band’s formation in 1981 through the release of 1984’s Ride The Lighting, each chapter features candid interviews, rare archival footage, messed-up animations from Anthony Schepperd, and unusual context showcasing the strange ways Metallica’s tentacles continue to worm their way through our collective unconscious.
James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich take you back to their uncomfortable years.
Ulrich recalled meeting Hetfield for the first time, “He was really awkward.”
“When I met Lars, he was pretty much a stinky European kid,” Hetfield says in the trailer. “He introduced me to a whole other world of music.”
The four-part series is divided into chapters titled “Metal Militia,” “Metal Up Your Ass,” “Sophistication and Brutality,” and “Armageddon’s Here.”
Kind of an ironic pick of Metallica by the streaming service since founding member and drummer Lars Ulrich was a very strong opponent of the original music sharing platform Napster.
From Wikipedia:
In April 2000, Ulrich became a vocal opponent of Napster and file sharing as Metallica filed a lawsuit against the company for copyright infringement and racketeering. In July 2000, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee after Metallica’s entire catalogue, including the then-unfinished track “I Disappear” was found to be freely available for download on the service. The case was settled out-of-court, resulting in more than 300,000 Napster users being banned from the service.
Of course, Spotify does charge for commercial-free music and pays artists (Sort of, a royalty of $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream).
Spotify’s first documentary debuts August 18, with all four parts available simultaneously.
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