METALLICA Launches iPhone App

METALLICA's web site has been updated with the following message:

"In our ongoing efforts to be of service and give you as many options as possible in the digital era, we asked the brainiacs that help us out with LiveMetallica.com to come up with a super-cool iPhone application that creates a streaming interface to your LiveMetallica account. In non-tech talk, that means that any show you have downloaded from the site will automatically stream to your iPhone once you launch the $.99 app. And the bonus is that the latest show on the site will always be streaming for free!

"It's pretty simple — search 'Metallica' in the iPhone App Store to find the Live Metallica app. Purchase the app, log into your existing LiveMetallica.com account or register as a new user, and wha-la . . . every show you've purchased is there under the 'listen' tab, along with a free stream of the latest show on the tour! You can listen to samples of over 5,300 live songs from close to 300 shows, and if you hear something you like, purchase it through the app and it will automatically stream on your phone . . . of course you can download your purchase to your computer later at your leisure. Shows from the free 'Vault' section of the site are always streaming, and you can check out photos and notes from almost every show going back to 2004 when the site launched.

"Just like any new technology, we're already thinking about what comes next, so please give us your feedback and ideas. And yes, a version is in the works to accommodate the addition of single track downloads from the site. Naturally we'll keep you posted on all the developments!"

METALLICA has added single-song downloads to the LiveMetallica.com web site. Instead of buying only entire concerts, fans can pick whatever individual songs they want from any concert they choose from. Every song that the band has recorded in concert since 2004, covering a span of 269 shows, is available for 99 cents per MP3. Full shows are still $9.95 as MP3 files and $12.95 as higher-quality FLAC files.

Frontman James Hetfield told The Pulse of Radio about deciding to release individual songs, "Yeah, I think the song-per-song vs. album is kind of a long lost battle, I think. You know, people in the fast-food world we live in want what they want, and want it now, and when they're done with it, they're done with it. So yeah, it's about time, and I think it's the right move."

LiveMetallica.com was launched in March 2004 and makes downloads available for purchase of every show the band has played since then, often within hours of the gig's finale.

More than 300,000 downloads have been purchased at the site since its launch.

The "Vault" section of the site offers free downloads of shows recorded before 2004.

More shows will crop up at the site in upcoming weeks, since METALLICA just launched a new North American tour last month. The band has dates booked through mid-December.