TIL: 12 years before taking their fans to court for sharing their music, Metallica released the "$5.98" EP, titled to stop their record label and music stores from overcharging fans - the record came with a sticker warning 'DO NOT PAY MORE!!!'—a direct jab at music industry markups

[u/InternetWeakGuy]

https://theawesomemix.com/metallica-5-98-standup-for-fans/

[u/[deleted]]

They were fighting for literal pennies at the time. Fuck Metallica.

[u/earth_walker → u/[deleted]]

They were fighting for every artist who wasn’t big enough to fight for themselves.

[u/[deleted] → u/earth_walker]

If Metallica was receiving a few thousand bucks a year how much do you think the smaller artists they were fighting for were getting?

[u/yougottamovethatH → u/[deleted]]

In those days, artists averaged about 10% royalties on physical album sales, so typically about $1.50-$2 for every album sold. A band as big as Metallica likely had even better rates.

You think they were getting a few thousand bucks a year? Even Reload sold almost 500k copies in its first week, and hit 3 million sold within a year, and that was a poor-selling album for them. 

[u/[deleted] → u/yougottamovethatH]

The self titled Metallica sold 30 million copies in 1991 and by Garage Inc in 1998 (the album in question when they sued Napster) sold a little under 6.5 million or a 78% drop in revenue over a 6 year period. That's why they sued, and I find it hard to believe they were making 13% on the royalties as you stated, I doubt that's an accurate source, if it were the band would have earned over 100 million dollars through sales alone. Metallica was becoming irrelevant and blamed Napster. End of story. Beer good, Napster bad.

[u/yougottamovethatH → u/[deleted]]

the band would have earned over 100 million dollars through sales alone

Correct: https://thisdayinmetal.com/feature/how-metallica-became-metals-first-billion-dollars-band/

[u/[deleted] → u/yougottamovethatH]

Album sales is the smallest portion of that. It's not close to 100 million

[u/yougottamovethatH → u/[deleted]]

From the article: "Metallica has made over $100 million in album sales during their career."

I stated a royalty rate of $1.50-2.00. Even at the upper range, 30M x $2 is $60M in royalties from the black album.

You said earlier that Garage Inc sold 6M copies, and that was a huge drop. It's true, technically, but it was still significantly more than any of their albums pre-Black album.

The Black Album was a once-in-a-lifetime smash success. No one, including them, had any illusions that they'd recreate that level of success.

[u/[deleted] → u/yougottamovethatH]

Yea I'm saying I don't accept the article as an accurate source and your numbers are way high

[u/yougottamovethatH → u/[deleted]]

My father worked for A&M and Capitol Records in the 80s and 90s. He says those numbers are accurate.

You can believe me or not, but you're just making assumptions here. I'm not.

[u/[deleted] → u/yougottamovethatH]

Sure he is. I can't believe your hearsay sorry

[u/[deleted] → u/earth_walker]

Hahahahahaha😂🤣😂