IRON MAIDEN Singer Disses METALLICA At Oslo Gig

July 7, 2003

IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson wants to make it clear that he does not share METALLICA's attitude with respect to illegal music downloading.

Performing with IRON MAIDEN at Oslo Spectrum last Wednesday (July 2),Dickinson made a deal with the 17,000 Norwegian MAIDEN fans in attendance before he sang the as-yet-unreleased song "Wildest Dreams" from the group's upcoming CD, "Dance of Death" (due on Sept. 9),reports Jan Thoresen of the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet.

"The album is not out yet, but please pull out our small digital recorders, MP3 players, cell phones or whatever you have. Put it on the Internet, spread it all over the world. But on one condition: When you hear the new album, if you like it, pay the equivalent of three beers to buy the record in the store. That is what keeps us alive. If you don't like the album, just forget it," Dickinson said, and the crowd went wild.

"We are not like METALLICA," he added.

In 2000 METALLICA sued the Napster file-sharing service for copyright infringement and delivered to the now-defunct company the names of more than 300,000 users — "fans" by another name — whom they accused of illegally making METALLICA songs available over the network. Facing an absolute public relations debacle, METALLICA eventually relented and withdrew the suit. Now fans who possess an access code from the insert to METALLICA's new CD, "St. Anger", can download high-quality MP3s of live METALLICA recordings and do whatever they want with them: burn them to CD, share them over the networks like Kazaa, and in general, "kick ass" in an unrestricted manner.

(Thanks: Jan Thoresen / Dagbladet)

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