Some musicians resist the digital revolution.

The dislike of some musicians for the Internet originated during the time of the “Napster” in the early 2000s. It was a golden age of piracy, when almost any person could easily surf the Internet and download an album of any musical group for free (now it has become a bit more difficult and dangerous, but not in our country). "Napster" then became famous throughout the world and became a real red rag for the recording industry, as well as for many musicians who saw that their CDs are getting worse and worse.

Cult groups really lose profits because of the Internet, although most musicians, on the contrary, win. Last year, economists from Harvard conducted a special study on this matter and found that three-quarters of the performers benefit from the fact that their albums fall into the file-sharing network. But this benefit is greater, the smaller the initial popularity of the artist. Only popular musicians lose (such as 25% of the total), whose revenues from the sale of CDs increase by an average of 10% when deleting files from P2P systems.

It is not surprising that some of the most popular musical groups became angry not only at Napster, but also at the entire Internet. Indeed, it is unpleasant to lose money. The most important ideological enemy of P2P services at one time was the Metallica group. She was joined by Madonna, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, the successors of the Beatles and some other performers. Even after the appearance of legal online stores, many of them flatly refused to sell their music through these stores. So much was allergic to the Internet.
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The group “Metallica” argued that they did not agree to sell songs by the piece. It humiliates them. They can only sell albums entirely, because they are whole and indivisible works of art. But the true reason is probably different. Cult musicians, who became old fart, simply could not accept the digital revolution, which radically changes their business and the whole world around. However, we all know that it is useless to resist here. Changes are inevitable, so sooner or later they will have to be accepted.

And so it happened. The group "Metallica" gave up. A few days ago, she said on the official website that she began selling her albums through the online store iTunes . True, only the first four albums of the group, which came out in 1983-1988 , are posted on the Internet, as well as several bonus tracks recorded during the concerts. The group has previously sold albums through select online stores, and now has agreed to sell songs by the piece at a standard price of 99 cents. At the same time, the iTunes store will become the exclusive seller of Metallica music in the United States and Canada.

Shortly before Metallica, similar agreements with iTunes were made by Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers group. They also refused to sell music over the Internet for a long time.

According to Nielson SoundScan statistics, in the I half. In 2006, 14.7 million music albums were sold on the Internet in digital form, which is more than two times more than during the same period last year (6.4 million). Analysts suggest that the digital content industry will continue to grow at the same rapid pace, especially as soon movies will appear in the range of online stores.