If you can hold your grudges over Metallica’s rocky past with the internet and sharing and look at what they are doing today with sharing their music online, it’s impressive. At LiveMetallica.com since 2004 you can buy Metallica concerts, often within 48 hours of the concert date in both MP3 ($9.99) and FLAC ($12.99) format. I’m not aware of many other bands that offer this much material, this soon, after concerts air. I still have my eye on buying the Key Arena concert we went to in 2004. These are mixing board recordings and the one in MP3 formath I have purchased thus far sounded good, albeit a bit disappointing at 128kbps.

At their newer site MissionMetallica.com you can register for free and gain free access to download several full past concerts plus get nearly daily updates on the upcoming album: Death Magnetic.

And speaking of Death Magnetic, the 7/17 update shares the album art for the new album (pictured above). You can download from MissionMetallica the album art in the following resolutions: 1280×1024, 1024×768, 800×600 as well as instant messenger buddy icons. One thing missing from the MissionMetallica.com website are RSS updates and podcasts. There are regular updates with some meat on the bones, check this screenshot out:

Optionally, you can choose to purchase three additional Mission Metallica experiences:

• Experience #2: $24.99 includes everything that Experience #1 (FREE) includes (whichI’ve written about in this post) plus download of Death Magnetic at midnight on street date at 320kbps + downloads of two entire shows from the summer tour + almost 2 hrs. of additional "fly on the wall" footage + 250 additional photos, ringtones of riffs from the new album + exclusive contests and $10 off merch or Fan Club membership at Metallica.com.
• Experience #3: $32.99 includes everything from Experience #1 and #2 + Death Magnetic CD with FREE shipping. I’ve got my eye on this one.
• Experience #4: $124.99 includes everything from Experience #1,#2 and #3 + a limited edition collectible 5LP 180 gram box with 5 individual sleeves.

Album art looks like Twilight Zone meets The Mummy. I’m psyched. I know, St. Anger was a letdown, but I’m ready for Death Magnetic and liking what the boys are doing with their music and multiple websites these days. If Death Magnetic is good they should go a long way to earning back some lost fans. Probably not the ones they were in favor of suing, but hey, it’s a start. Check it out.

Update July 23, 2008 8:16pm PST: The Death Magnetic complete track list has now been shared in the running order (10 songs):

That Was Just Your Life
The End Of The Line
Broken, Beat & Scarred
The Day That Never Comes
All Nightmare Long
Cyanide
The Unforgiven III
The Judas Kiss
Suicide & Redemption
My Apocalypse

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