As music has evolved towards digital stores Metallica have been one of the industry’s most vocal opposers having criticised YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and others. Now their new album is on all of them.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4 in April this year, Metallica’s manager Peter Mensch said: “YouTube, they’re the devil. We don’t get paid at all. If someone doesn’t do something about YouTube, we’re screwed. It’s over. Someone turn off the lights.”

But now 7 months later Metallica haven’t just uploaded the entirety of their new album on YouTube, they’ve created a music video for every single track and uploaded it all to their YouTube channel. It seems that Metallica have either come to with streaming’s prevalence or have been forced to succumb.

Whether it was the band’s own choice or not it represents a drastic departure from their long held contempt for online music services. Back in 2000 the band, led by drummer Lars Ulrich, undertook a lawsuit against Napster for illegally sharing their music. 16 years later and Napster has been reborn as a legitimate streaming service which Metallica just released their new album on.

Metallica also opted-out of making their music available on Spotify however have since uploaded their catalog, joining other artists in Spotify U-Turns like Radiohead and Neil Young. Metallica have not only put their music onto Spotify and other streamers but also teamed up with Spotify earlier this year for an exclusive documentary as one of Spotify’s new video series.

Check out one of the videos below and head to the MetallicaTV YouTube channel for the rest.