During an appearance on the latest episode of the “Wild Ride! With Steve-O” podcast, SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor was asked if he has a preferred way that people can consume music from his various projects. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Obviously, I’m gonna say the old-school way — buy the album, look at the artwork, read the lyrics.
“It’s kind of weird, it’s kind of hard, because in this day and age, it’s really hard to know which ones of the fucking streaming services actually compensate the artists that they’re ripping off,” he continued. “It’s more important for me that people listen to the music. At this point, I’ve kind of made peace with the fact that there are various services who are just kind of screwing us, and until the legislation is actually enforced, which they passed under Trump — which I couldn’t fucking believe — they’ll keep charging us at that rate. But they’ve appealed that legislation. I don’t think the appeals will actually go through. They will raise the rates, and musicians will be able to make a living off their recordings again.”
Corey went on to praise METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich whose band’s image took a tremendous beating in the eyes of music fans after METALLICA launched legal action against the pioneering music file-sharing service Napster in 2000.
“I remember everyone giving him so much shit ’cause of that, and he was so right on so many fucking levels, dude,” Taylor said. “It’s scary. And I wonder how many people look back and eat a little crow because of that… ‘Cause he knew — he knew that this was the direction we were going.”
METALLICA sued Napster after the band discovered that a leaked demo version of its song “I Disappear” was circulating on the pioneering music file-sharing service before it was released.
In May 2000, Ulrich famously delivered a literal truckload of paper to Napster Inc., listing hundreds of thousands of people who allegedly used the company’s software to share unauthorized MP3s of METALLICA‘s songs.
METALLICA representatives compiled the more than 60,000-page list of 335,435 Napster user IDs over one weekend in response to Napster’s promise to terminate the accounts of users who trade material without permission. Real names were not included in the list.
In later years, METALLICA embraced digital music: in December 2012, the band made all of its studio albums, as well as various live material, singles, remixes and collaborations, available on Spotify.
