Metallica Bringing Music Catalog to Spotify

Metallica made their catalog available on Spotify today, an addition the streaming music service trumpted with a Tweet that read, “Spotify just got louder!”

“With the kind of global reach that [Spotify] had, we were ready to jump in as soon as we took control of our own masters,” drummer Lars Ulrich said at a press conference in New York.

All nine of the band’s studio albums are available, as well as some of their live material, scattered singles, and even remixes and collaborations (in case you forgot about “We Did It Again,” their 2002 collabo with Swizz Beatz and Ja Rule).

Metallica have had a long, rather tepid relationship with online music downloading and streaming services: The group didn’t make their catalog available on the iTunes music store until 2006, and they were infamously one of the first bands to take on Napster (fun fact: Napster founder Sean Parker now serves on Spotify’s board and was at the press event as well; he and the band seemed to have buried that hatchet).

Many artists and labels continue to remain suspicious of Spotify as well. Adele and the Black Keys have both withheld albums from the streaming service during their first few weeks on the market, as did Taylor Swift’s label Big Machine with her latest record Red. Just this past spring, Spotify holdouts Red Hot Chili Peppers signed an exclusive deal with the streaming service to make their catalog available.

Source: Rolling Stone