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Comment by vsnf | Hacker News Reader

Just finished listening to this, thanks for the recommendation.

They spend some time interviewing Lars Ulrich of Metallica in the context of of the Napster lawsuit. He comes across in this interview as still upset at Napster for what they did, and he is at turns indignant and also emotionally wounded at the fact that they are perceived as the villains in the story. In particular he cannot seem to reconcile his belief that they, and I quote "are the most fan friendly band on this planet" with suing Napster for $100k per download in damages, a ludicrous and arrogant sum. I am not a Metallica fan and do not listen to their music (out of disinterest, not antifandom. Metal isn't my genre), but it is striking to me to see how 20 years on they still don't get it.

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I watched a documentary they made about themselves... Only went there because two band colleagues ask me if i wanna come. In one scene he stands in front of a 4mx4m painting he is going to auction off. Some colors smeared over black foundation, ugly as hell if you'd ask for my irrelevant opinion. Sipping a drink he says: "Sometimes i stand here and ask myself: 'What did the artist think when he made it?'"

Slayers' drummer Dave Lombardo said about his colleague Kerry King: "He is the dumbest person i know."

You don't have to be smart, your ego problems figured out or a likeable personality to make great music.

Narcissim plays its part too. I think actually is okay to want to be admired by others by accomplishing great things. I think it is a biological urge to attract a mate. Doseage makes the poison though.

Ulrich took it personally, thinking it was somebody stealing from him. I'm convinced Metallica would have faded to irrelevance far earlier if people hadn't downloaded their music.

A lot of musicians still think this way, "I should be able to make a living from my craft and thus piracy is theft." But that's a misunderstanding, I believe -- people would still pay money for music, just like they pay money to creators on YouTube and the likes even if most of the content is freely available.

Studies showed that people who download more, spend more money on music than those who don't.

It strikes me as totally reasonable and predictable that the people who spend the most money on music would be the people who download the most music.

>I'm convinced Metallica would have faded to irrelevance far earlier if people hadn't downloaded their music.

No offense but this is wishful thinking, they're one of the best selling bands of all time.

> 20 years on they still don't get it

Here's a great clip (from the amazingly deep diving podcast What Had Happened Was) with El-P from Run the Jewels, et al, about why RTJ gives away their albums, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdtLTw7Xsj8.

Money tends to change people.

Anything that qualitatively changes what survival means to us, will change someone. For good, bad, indifferent. For most people a combination.

A close friend gave me insight on why success changes people, after I hit a milestone that mattered to me. He told me, "You are still going to have problems, they are just going to be different problems."

Each of our moral outlooks, stability, suitability for state of life, relatability, etc., is heavily dependent on our relationship with our survival environment. And success radically changes that relationship qualitatively, when it changes it much quantitatively.

I think this is by far the best quantification of this phenomena.

Did you read about the "what survival means to us" somewhere, or was that just convos with friends?

Just a convo with one friend.

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