METALLICA DEATH MAGNETIC INTERNET ALBUM OF 2008

Despite Metallica’s rocky relationship with fans regarding Napster, the band’s Death Magnetic is the Number 1 album on the Internet.

Although their fight against Napster made Metallica fans cringe they did foreshadow the demise of the record companies, or at least the advanced restructuring of those companies. While they railed against file sharing, it was fans on the internet who bought their new effort Death Magnetic, enough to make it the top internet album according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album reportedly sold 144,000 copies, which pales in comparison to traditional sales and to the band’s historical sales.

The album received other top year end award honors, and part of that may have had to do with the emergence of Rick Rubin as their producer. Metallica vocalist James Hetfield talked in a previous interview about what it was like working with Rubin.

“Rick’s…. His reputation is true. He’s not showing up every day in the studio. He’s there when needed, and we are there flying on our own, and that’s very different from our last record, St. Anger: You know, hours and hours of talking and talking about what’s going to go on, what just happened, what’s gonna happen, all that, and going in and having coaches here or there. This one we’re pretty much on our own, and it does, it feels free. It feels really nice, no pressure. It feels good, sometimes a little unfocused so we have to crack the whip to get everyone in there.”

Metallica ended up being Nielsen SoundScan’s Number 5 selling artist with over 2.4 million copies of Death Magnetic sold.