METALLICA's LiveMetallica.com Web Site Now Offering Single-Track Downloads

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

"When we launched www.livemetallica.com over five years ago, it seemed like the next logical step of service in the digital age as we've always encouraged you to record and trade our shows. The site gives us the chance to offer you a high-quality recording of the show you went to, or any other show for that matter, and you don't even have to sneak your tape deck, um uh, we mean portable digital recording device, into the arena! So here we are 269 shows, 5,338 songs and 310,386 downloads later and we want to thank you for all your support, encouragement and comments. Lo and behold, five-plus years later and no two set lists have been the same! Wow!!!

"Speaking of those comments . . . the one overwhelming request we've had is to offer up single-track downloads. Since we always aim to please, YOU GOT IT! That simple. Check out the new and improved LiveMetallica.com and you'll see that every song we've recorded live since the site launched from Phoenix on March 2, 2004 is now available for you to pick and choose from for $.99 each song on mp3. For the über-fan, of course the full show can still be downloaded for a dough-saving $9.95 mp3 . . . super-audiophiles can grab the high-quality FLAC version for $12.95 a full-show download.

"We have some other cool things in the works for the site too that we'll be telling you about in the coming weeks, and, of course, as the tour rolls through North America, each and every show will be added, usually within a few hours after it ends. And don't forget to visit the 'Vault' section of the site for FREE downloads of selected shows prior to 2004. Be sure to let us know what you think!"

As previously reported, METALLICA set a record for largest paid attendance for all events ever at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with their two sold-out shows on September 19-20. The San Francisco Bay Area metal giants beat out the likes of KISS, UFC, CELINE DION and U2.

Official Metallica.com footage of the September 20 Montreal concert can be viewed below.

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told Nudge from Dayton, Ohio radio station 103.9 The X earlier in the month that fans should not expect a follow-up to last year's "Death Magnetic" album any time soon. Ulrich said that the group will most likely be touring through the end of 2010 before taking a break, and that work on a new record probably wouldn't begin until at least the second half of 2011. Ulrich told The Pulse of Radio something along the same lines when he was asked a similar question. "I wouldn't hold my breath," he said. "Do the math yourself, as I like to hear myself say, you know. You got another year on the road, and then you gotta, you know, breathe for a little while, then you gotta do it all over again. I'd love to put records out more often, but right now, I don't know what's gonna give, in between touring and having some chill time with the family and how long it takes to, you know, make these records."

The drummer did hint to Nudge that, while a full METALLICA album could be three or more years away, the band could join the ranks of artists who are releasing music in new formats. He explained, "The record itself is starting to be sort of an outdated format, so who knows . . . We're out of our record contract, so we could go back to HQ (METALLICA's headquarters in San Rafael, California) and record something and then we could put it up on our web site and whoever wanted to download it could download it."

METALLICA took six years between 1997's "Reload" and 2003's "St. Anger", although they did also issue a covers collection and live album during that time. But it was another five years before "Death Magnetic" came out in 2008.