The band upped their platinum album totals on two of their classics, with Metallica (the Black Album) getting its 16th Platinum certificate signifying 16,000,000 copies sold while Ride the Lightning receive its 6th. They also received six gold certificates for passing 500,000 digital downloads of individual songs and two gold certificates for songs that exceeded 500,000 downloads as ringtones.

Metallica at Outside Lands is Number 1!

Will they?! Won't they?! Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich bursts onto the new cover of Metal Hammer to talk about Metallica's plans for 2013, that immense 3D movie, and whether we'll actually get that new album next year or not.

Lars Ulrich wants you know that he's cool with Sean Parker. To show it, the Metallica drummer and anti-filesharing crusader didn't just share a stage with the Napster cofounder this morning - he hugged him. The occasion? Metallica's catalog is newly available on Spotify, the music service in which Parker is now an investor.

Another noteworthy element to Spotify’s announcement is that Metallica’s full catalog is now available for your streaming pleasure. Yes, Napster-gunning Lars Ulrich is letting people listen to his music for free (mostly). This seems to be the culmination of the “I don’t really give a sh*t” approach he began taking back in 2008.

Heavy metal superstars Metallica, a band with a notoriously icy, skeptical view of digital music and streaming, will be releasing their entire back catalogue through the Swedish music platform.

At a press event in New York, Daniel Ek, the founder and CEO Spotify, unveiled tools to help users of the popular global music streaming service discover new music. And he announced a coup for the service: Spotify struck a deal with longtime online music holdout Metallica to make all of the band's music available for streaming.

Metallica, a band that for years fought to keep its music off peer-to-peer sites, has agreed to allow their entire decades-spanning catalog to be freely available on Spotify.

The company made the announcements at a splashy New York event on Thursday that included a conversation between Spotify backer Sean Parker and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich.