"We think it's great that Metallica has come around and decided to embrace the legal digital distribution platform, and that music fans using Napster can now enjoy this vast and important catalog of music," says Matt Adell, vice president of Music Services at Napster.

"Over the last year or so, we have seen an ever-growing number of Metallica fans using online sites like iTunes to get their music," writes the band on its Web site, www.metallica.com. "So, in continuing with the tradition of offering our albums for sale online (which we've been doing for a few years through various sites), as well as making our live concerts available for download in their entirety, we are now offering fans the opportunity to obtain our songs individually."

News source: ABC News