Metallica Thinking Outside Of The (Cereal) Box
The band contemplate novel approach to next album release, including a "cereal box"
The thrash legends are currently label-less but they're about to head to the studio soon to start working on a follow-up to 2008's Death Magnetic and they're pondering their next move.
"We're writing music and we're going to be recording very soon," drummer Lars Ulrich told Spin. "At some point we're going to want to share that with people that are interested in listening to it. So we gotta figure out ways we want to do that, from giving it away in cereal boxes to getting people to do handstands for it. We could come up with something wacky."
One thing Ulrich wants to make clear, though, is that the band is not sitting around conjuring up buzzy distribution models. "This whole thing about who can come up with the coolest release strategy so it can be written about on 12 different blogs for six hours — I mean sure, that's all pretty cool and hip," he says, "but at the same time you have to remember we have a very global audience. We have fans in India and the U.A.E. and Russia. In a lot of these places there are still more conventional ways of getting music to people. We're not just selling Metallica music to people in Los Angeles, New York, and London. We have to think of the whole globe to try to find the right balance."