With Australia’s new Facebook news ban in place, it’s been quite the week for censorship. Now, Metallica are the latest to feel the wrath of being suppressed, after their performance at this year’s BlizzCon for Twitch was muted and replaced with cheesy elevator music.
Twitch is the world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers that is used by millions of users all over the world. The platform hosts an annual gaming convention called BlizzCon and this year Metallica featured in the opening ceremony.
However, instead of the raw sound of Metallica’s classic ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ listeners who tuned into the Twitch Gaming feed were instead treated to a questionable tune which sounded extremely reminiscent of a song you’d hear when you’re popped on call waiting.
The reason for this bizarre crossover? An act by the brand to avoid a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown order as it seems Twitch hadn’t paid the proper royalties for the song to appear.
Experience the peculiar mismatch, which has received over 4.8 million streams, for yourself:
the current state of Twitch: the official Twitch Gaming channel cut off the live Metallica concert to play 8bit folk music to avoid DMCA pic.twitter.com/sCn56So8Ee
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 19, 2021
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Thankfully, viewers were able to listen to Metallica’s actual epic performance properly on other Twitch channels like Blizzard’s own and the official BlizzCon livestream on YouTube.
The irony of such a censorship mishap happening to Metallica was not lost on many. Fans took to social media to reminisce of when Metallica sued Napster over musical streaming laws.
After an incomplete version of Metallica’s ‘I Disappear’ appeared on Napster, as well as their entire music catalogue, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster and took the downloading platform to court.
“I got a call from our office the next day: ‘It traces back to something called Napster,’” Lars Ulrich said of the time. “And we were like, ‘Well, they fucked with us, we’ll fuck with them.’”
Twitter is currently having an absolute field day over the dubbed clip, check out some of the best reactions below.
There’s something really funny about Metallica being dubbed over during Blizzcon due to copyright concerns.
The band famously went to war with file sharing service Napster 21 years ago to prevent copyright infringement on their music. Kind of a Frankenstein’s monster situation.
— Colin McNeil (@McNeilColin) February 20, 2021
Yooooooooo I haven’t heard Metallica in years but this new stuff they’re playing on the Blizzcon stream goes HARD pic.twitter.com/mxNkg5ehnD
— billysmilesxxl (@BillySmilesXXL) February 20, 2021
So Twitch was broadcasting the Blizzcon opening ceremony.
Cut to a Metallica performance, and instead of literally -anything else- they played elevator music over it. 😂😂😂
— 🔴 LIVE – Finamenon (@finamenon) February 19, 2021
Dead. 💀💀💀
