Metallifreak 
RESPECTED MEMBER
Registration Date: 27.05.2005
Posts: 5,172
Herkunft: Köflach
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Met Clubbers!
By now you probably know that The Metallica Club, the fan club you hold near and dear to your heart, has leapt forward by offering free membership. We've been reading through your comments and we know that many of you are disappointed and a bit bewildered and we want to let you know that we hear you! We also see many questions, so let us do our best to address them and along the way hopefully ease some of your concerns.
WHY?!? A lot... ha, who are we kidding... nearly all of you want to know why we're making such a drastic change. To start, obviously a lot has changed since 1993 when the Club first began. There's a vastly different world out there and now we have more opportunity than ever to reach out to fans far and wide and bring them into the family. We wanted the chance to offer the benefits of being a fan club member to ALL of our fans, not just to the people who could afford to pay $45-$60 a year. In other words, we had become too exclusive for too few people. Metallica has always been about being included and we didn't want to exclude anyone from sharing their love for the band with other members of the 'Tallica family and by doing so, we hope that we foster a new improved worldwide community and that you'll make additional friends in places you might not have even heard of!
WHY NOW? Because the back quarter of 2015 and first part of 2016 is shaping up to be about as quiet as it ever gets in the Metallica universe these crazy days... it seemed like the best time while there is pretty significant downtime from touring, i.e. presale tickets and meet and greets. This is a change we have been thinking about for quite some time and the opportunity presented itself while the band is in the studio finishing the next album. For those of you who recently joined or renewed, everyone will receive at least three So What! magazines and the few of you who unfortunately do not get a fourth magazine in your membership year will be emailed a $10 gift certificate to the Met Store shortly, where you can choose from hundreds of items including past So What! issues.
WHO'S RUNNING THE FAN CLUB NOW?!? Nothing has changed in that regard at all (for better or worse!!!). The same team is running the Club and the Club is still overseen by the band. Steffan Chirazi will continue to write his riveting (?!?) articles for the new improved online edition of our magazine So What!, Jeff and Dan will continue updating the website with more content than ever including videos, photos, studio updates and contests. The Met Store team will continue to handle all your merchandise needs from shirts, hoodies and hats to music, stickers, and skateboards, etc. A lot of your have asked who Stagebloc is - they're the guys we have picked to make all of our new and crazy ideas come to life online. In essence they're our web developers (and friends), but fear not, they are in no way whatsoever taking over the Fan Club.
DOES THIS MEAN NO MORE MEMBERSHIP PACKAGE?!? Rather than receiving a membership package every year, we're simply going to offer the Club T-Shirt for sale in the Met Store. This way, you won't have to wait until you renew to get the new shirt and, in case you're not a fan of the design, you can skip it all together. We'll also be offering you more options and sizes of the annual design so if you're feeling hoodie or hat a certain year, you can make that choice.
BUT WHAT ABOUT EXCLUSIVE CONTENT?!? We're going to continue to do what we've been doing (and then some!) to bring you the same exclusives that you've grown accustomed to. That includes regular contests, merchandise you just don't see anywhere else and Steffan is still going to sit down and have a number of what he likes to call "chinwags" with the band (interviews to the rest of us). You'll see exclusive video content (like the amazing 'Tallica Parking Lot short from Robert!) and we've got a couple other tricks up our sleeves that we hope you'll like as well.
FORGET THE CONTENT! WHAT ABOUT TICKETS?!? Ah yes. Ticket presales! We are going to do our best to give the long time Met Clubbers, or as we lovingly refer to you around here, our "Legacy" members, first crack at tickets before the general Met Club presale. It may not always happen as sometimes we have a limited block of tickets (for instance at a festival), but those of you who fit the "Legacy" title will always receive notice when we have something special for you. As we like to say, keep watching those e-mails and keep your profiles updated.
Some of you have commented that because the Club is free, more scalpers would now join and be able to get the good tickets. Unfortunately, while there will always be some scalping of Metallica tickets (just as there were some paid members who scalp!!!), we are addressing the scalpers with the most "next level" anti-scalping/anti-bot technology and are confident that it will not be a problem.
OK, OK... ARE THERE STILL GOING TO BE MEET & GREETS?!? Yes! There will still be meet & greets and we're reserving a portion of those M&G passes for our Legacy members.
ALRIGHT, FINE! BUT YOU STILL TOOK AWAY MY STORE DISCOUNT, DIDN'T YOU?! Actually, we didn't! As long as you were a member of the Met Club for longer than two years at some point in time, you will still receive a discount on almost every item in the Met Store and the longer you've been a member, the more you'll save.
We have lots more planned... more content... more opportunities to win... more experiences to... um... well, experience!
The website is going to continue to grow as more and more content is added. Also know that we'll be rolling out album themed skins over time. We'll soon be offering digital downloads (including HD Audio!) in the Met Store along with Live Metallica recordings!
We hope that you'll grow to love the new Club and we all look forward to taking the journey together as we develop lots of new and innovative ways of engaging with you even more so than we did for the first 22 years.
Keep those questions and comments coming!
The Metallica Club
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