Avenged Sevenfold frontman M.Shadows was recently interviewed by Bob Lefsetz Podcast and talked about streaming and how saved the music industry.
About the band’s experience with streaming, he said: “We did that surprise release with “The Stage”, we had the pushback, and it kind of shocked us. I think every time you bring up streaming to people, and you get all these old bands that are bitter about it, and it’s very weird.”
He added: “They’re still in 2022 talking about how music doesn’t make any money, no one’s buying our Cds. Maybe you’re not relevant? Let’s be relevant, let’s put our hat in the ring so when they’re listening to Bieber or The Weeknd, they can jump over to Metallica and Avenged Sevenfold. We’re playing in the same park here.”
He admits he still sees some reluctance to embrace streaming by certain acts: “That has always made sense to me, but you still get these people that are there, ‘Streaming’s killed industry, and now we got to do this and we got to do that.’ No, streaming kind of saved the industry, It saved the user, I call them the Web 2.0 user. The fan gets to listen to you at any point, so how are you going to get their attention? How are you going to be the best thing that’s going to be going through their earholes that day?”
M.Shadows concluded: “That’s what we should be striving for and not having an argument if we should put it on CD or vinyl or streaming. The battle has already been won. I don’t have a real good answer to it, I just think sometimes we get stuck in our ways, and metal has really dug their heels in on this, ‘We’re not gonna move along with the rest of the world. We kind of like it this way.'”
