No Rock And Roll Fun

YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND... WE'RE ARTISTS: Missing the point of the whole download revolution, Linkin Park, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, (sadly) Garbage and (of course) Metallica are refusing to join the new legal download services because they don't like the idea of people just buying the tracks they want. Rather like the way Lou Reed demanded that fans listen to New York all the way through at a single sitting (we always used to skip 'last great american whale' on principle), they don't want people to just pick up the songs they like but to recognise the completeness of the work of art. (Funny how the RHCP and Linkin Park's artistic visions always manage to clock in at roughly the average length of a CD, innit?).

So, what we're faced with here is Metallica refusing to take part in a legal download system. So how can they whine if their declining audience decides to seek out the tracks from the backstreets? If they deliberately turn their back on a way of selling tracks over the web, choose not to exploit that revenue stream, how can they say that they're being deprived of cash by downloaders?