Oh, its the little things like this, courtesy of techdirt, that warm a meager Accountability Soldier’s heart. Metallica, you’ve done some great things in the wonderful world of heavy metal music. You’ve created one of the most widely appreciated and copied guitar and drum sounds in all of hard rock riffery… You’ve be able to reinvent your sound (Sometimes good: Black Album. Sometimes bad: St. Anger) and stay relevant or even attract new fans… Heck, you’ve even cut your hair, probably the headbanger’s most valued asset, and still not threatened the Metallica fans that define the hardest of the hardcore. But then you had to pick the Record Label’s side of the Napster dispute. Unfortunately for you, your fans were on the other side.

Without rehashing the whole argument again, I wonder if maybe Metallica were able to transport themselves back to the year 2000 and ask themselves “Do we take our fans side?”, would they make the same decision again? I guessing here, but I think that Metallica got caught up in their own success. They had so much success in the past, they truly believed that by “being right” so many times before that they were going to be able to convince their fans (both existing and potential) that sharing music was wrong. But Metallica might as well have been trying to fight gravity, because all that they succeeded in was alienating themselves and pushing fans to other alternatives.

This brings us to the topic of accountability. Without judging the right-ness or wrong-ness of Metallica’s decision to support the Record Label’s business model, it is clear that their actions have split their fanbase. The folks at techdirt bring up a great point. How many times can one’s reputation be tarnished, and as a result have their support base diluted before there is no support left? If the individual was innovative enough to continue to provide products or services that have value, then they will continue to survive and build up goodwill. And goodwill is proof that the individual is dedicated to customer service (in this case, this includes letting Metallica fans rock out to their music). The bottom line is Metallica has proven that accountability works as an incentive (or as a deterrent in this case) for the transactions in which they deal. By refusing to embrace the reality that the new marginal cost of music distribution is now zero, they chose to burn some goodwill with existing and potential fans that feel the exact opposite is true. As the old adage goes, isn’t the customer always right?