Since Metallica's announcement of their new album and global tour last week, "72 Seasons," the marketing campaign for the band's eleventh studio album has been met with an avalanche of scams.
In a novel twist, however, it appears that these recent scams have been disguised as Metallica's official YouTube account.
After the band announced "72 Seasons," multiple bogus Metallica YouTube channels began livestreaming advertisements for the upcoming album/tour cycle.
The livestreams feature press interviews conducted by the band in 2020 and 2021, while they were promoting their COVID lockdown livestreams and the reissue of the Black Album the previous year. It was odd to see these old interviews resurfacing in films like "James Hetfield: 72 Seasons (performing the entire album) & Lux Aeterna, World Tour 2023."
Blatantly, Metallica has not been playing their new album or promoting it in any way in these streams, and these channels are obviously fraudulent. In addition, these channels push a QR code they market as a download link to "the new Metallica album," but it's actually promotion for a crypto scam these false channels are operating.
Metallica has taken it upon themselves to inform fans of these ongoing scams, given the attention these channels have received over the past week and how prevalent they have become. The band said that following last week's enthusiastic announcements of their new song, album, and tour, the negative side of social media unfortunately made an appearance.
They acknowledged that many of their fans have alerted them to YouTube channels, live streams, and websites that claim to be giving out Metallica Crypto in conjunction with last week's announcement. They are cons, the band said.
It's shocking how many new fake channels YouTube hasn't yet deleted despite the platform's best efforts.
On a few of these channels, which have already accumulated hundreds of thousands of members, there have been reports of people losing upwards of $25,000 due to fraudulent cryptocurrency transactions.
This is definitely something that more fans should be aware of, especially considering the extremely high demand for tickets to Metallica's 72 Seasons tour, which just started going on sale the week before last.
They are being streamed on bogus YouTube channels impersonating them and directing viewers to websites that they actually do not operate.
The band reminds their fans to please keep in mind that all of their authorized social media outlets are authentic. The band reminds the fans to always seek official confirmation before accepting a bold and improbable claim as true.
They said they appreciate their diligence in reporting these live streams to YouTube and to them.
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