'Hypocritical' Metallica launches music download service

Call it a change of heart or call it hypocrisy, but Metallica, the band who famously hounded Napster all the way into extinction is to launch its own free music download service.

Metallicavault.com is set to go live on Thursday and users will be able to access the service using a code printed on the inside of the band's latest CD.

With very little sense of irony, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said in a statement: "We've always wanted our fans to experience our music online."

"But up until now, the existing distribution methods have not passed the kind of 'quality' standards our fans have come to expect from us," he added.

Its anti-Net phase now apparently over, Metallica joins with other musicians and recording labels using the web to promote albums. Madonna recently created a huge buzz when she sold her "American Life" single on Madonna.com.

When file-swapping exploded in peer-to-peer communities such as Napster, the members of Metallica were among the first artists to lash out. The band sued Napster in April 2000; and at the time, the band implicated more than 335,000 Napster screen names for sharing Metallica songs online illegally. The band wasn't threatening to sue the software users, but demanded that Napster block them from its MP3-swapping service.

At the time, the Metallica lawsuit said: "Napster has built a business based on large-scale piracy. Facilitating that are hypocritical universities and colleges who could easily block this insidious and ongoing thievery scheme."

Despite the heated charges, the band now says its early grievances were merely about the quality of music offered through Napster file-swapping, not about the theft.

Metallica's suit was later combined with many other similar suits against Napster, which were resolved when a federal judge ordered Napster to block copyrighted music files.

Stefanie Olsen writes for News.com