ANTHRAX drummer Charlie Benante in a new interview with The Irish Times, was asked if the music industry has changed for the better or worse in the 40-plus years since the band was formed. He responded: “There is no music industry. That’s what has changed. There is nothing anymore. There are people listening to music, but they are not listening to music the way music was once listened to. It’s a different time now.”
“Here’s a strange thing. While I have seen people eating a little bit more healthy here and there, the industry of music was one of things hit the worst and nobody did anything about it,” he continued. “They just let it happen. There was no protection, no nothing. Subconsciously this may be the reason why we don’t make records every three years or whatever because I don’t want to give it away for free.
“I take music very seriously and what I do and what I write is very personal and, for someone to take it is not right. It is like I pay Amazon $12.99 a month and I can just go on Amazon and I can get whatever I want. It is basically stealing. It is stealing from the artist — the people who run music streaming sites like Spotify.
“I don’t subscribe to Spotify,” Charlie Benante revealed. “I think it is where music goes to die. We have the music on there because we have to play along with the fucking game, but I’m tired of playing the game.”
“We get taken advantage of the most out of any industry. As artists, we have no health coverage, we have nothing,” Benante added. ” They fucked us so bad, I don’t know how we come out of it. You’d probably make more money selling lemonade on the corner.”
Charlie Benante was also asked if he thought Metallica was right in deciding to launch legal action against Napster in 2000. Although the case was settled out of court, 300,000 users were banned from the pioneering music file-sharing service as a result and Metallica’s image took a tremendous beating in the eyes of music fans.
“They were absolutely right about it,” Charlie said. They were protecting their art, their intellectual property so that someone does not come along and take your art. They make the money while you just make the art and you just give it away.
“People don’t know anything about this. Until you have lived the way we live and do what we have done, then you can comment on it.”
In March 2018, Benante made headlines when he said that “Apple had a big hand in destroying music” more than 20 years ago when the music business refused to adapt to the changes brought about by the Internet. “The record companies had a big hand in it, because they got greedy,” he said.
“The artists got greedy when they felt, ‘Oh, I can get a three-album deal for 75 million dollars,’ but at the end of the day, if they’re taking all that money, what happens to the lesser-known bands who are striving to become something? Where does that money come from? I mean, it was just such a mess, and it really dug a hole for itself. And now who is paying for it? Everybody.”
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.