Metallica’s Lars Ulrich says team-up with Apple Music is a ‘no-brainer’

Having gotten exclusives from Eminem, Pharrell and Drake, could Metallica be the next artists to debut their new material on Apple Music?

In a new interview with the BBC World Service, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich described a potential team-up with Apple Music as “a no-brainer.” The band’s first new album 2008’s Death Magnetic? Yes, please.

“Personally, I have 37 Apple products and that’s just me not counting the rest of my family, so that’s a fairly easy one for me,” Ulrich said, offering his response to Apple Music.

“Eddy Cue and the people who run the music over at Apple [are] very passionate about artists and music and so on, so you feel like there’s safe relationships to be in,” Ulrich continued, also going on to praise Spotify.

For anyone who remembers the Metallica backlash in the early 2000s when the band spoke out about peer-to-peer download service Napster, the about-turn on digital music is interesting. While some critics have noted that artists don’t necessarily make the same royalties that they did in an earlier age, Ulrich describes services like Apple Music as a new “choice” for musicians:

“I believe streaming is good for music. People sit there and go, ‘I’m not getting paid very much for streaming’ but streaming is a choice on all fronts. It’s a choice for the fan to be part of… it’s a choice for the artists who are involved in making their music available on streaming services. It’s a choice by the record companies that represent the artist… 15 years ago those choices didn’t exist.”

Ulrich did, however, note that streaming music — particularly curated services with recommended playlists — favors popular artists over lesser-known independent ones, although he says this is more an indictment of the substandard quality of modern music.

“One of the main reasons I connect less with new music in my life now is because there’s less great new music to connect with,” Ulrich said. “I mean a lot of the stuff that’s been played is just regurgitated, this year’s flavour, this thing, but it’s not people on the leading edge like The Beatles or the Miles Davises or the Jimmy Hendrixes taking us all by the hand into these completely unknown, unchartered musical territories.”

Via: NME

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.