Metallica taking tips from Nine Inch Nails on going it alone

Hats (or hi-hats) off to Lars Ulrich out of Metallica – despite being surrounded by reps from his label WMG at a recent press event, he was happy to talk about the band’s plans to possibly go it alone now its deal with the label has expired.”Let’s cut to the chase: The primary – not the only, but the primary – function of a record label is to act as a bank. When you’re fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don’t need to rely on record companies as the banks… We’re doing a bunch of shows with Trent [Reznor - of Nine Inch Nails] this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what’s on his radar.”Reznor, of course, has been trying tactics like giving away his album on BitTorrent – and even setting up his own torrent tracker. We suspect Metallica would draw the line at this, but whatever you think of the band’s previous attitudes towards file-sharing, taking tips from NIN on how to evolve in the digital era is a positive move.Well, unless you’re WMG of course. Meanwhile, Ulrich is also excited about the Guitar Hero: Metallica game that’s coming out. “I really believe that if we sit here five years from now or ten years… it’ll be a fairly standard way of releasing music.”