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Audiobook9 hours
How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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About this audiobook
"What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime?"
How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It's about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store.
Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet.
Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online - when, suddenly, all the music ever recorded was available for free. In the page-turning tradition of writers like Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright, Witt's deeply-reported first book introduces the unforgettable characters-inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers-who revolutionized an entire artform, and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.
An irresistible never-before-told story of greed, cunning, genius, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn't just a story of the music industry-it's a must-read history of the Internet itself.
How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It's about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store.
Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet.
Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online - when, suddenly, all the music ever recorded was available for free. In the page-turning tradition of writers like Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright, Witt's deeply-reported first book introduces the unforgettable characters-inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers-who revolutionized an entire artform, and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.
An irresistible never-before-told story of greed, cunning, genius, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn't just a story of the music industry-it's a must-read history of the Internet itself.
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Reviews for How Music Got Free
Rating: 4.232142735714286 out of 5 stars
4/5
112 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5"The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy." The largely untold story of how a handful of obscure German engineers, with the eventual help of a vast underground of pirates and hackers, developed the mp3, and turned the music industry inside out.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating book. Even the technological details are mesmerising. Thanks to Witt for helping us see the forest better.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Despite author's claims this reads like history that has been researched after the fact rather than lived through. Good effort and an interesting book, especially the Fraunhofer parts but fails to delve into the technical aspects to any useful degree and the scene part must be some sort of exercise in misdirection or is just arbitrarily selective.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I found this a fascinating read. The writing style is conversational and engaging, holding my interest throughout.I'm an avid music collector, now considered "old school", with my vinyl and CD collection. My sons are a little younger than the author, a part of the "free" generation, and so I was very much aware of the piracy issue from early on. Much of the media information back then came via the music industry, with their shouts of foul play and their lawsuits. They failed to grasp that, for the kids, this was not just about getting free stuff; this was a counterculture. Here, Witt gives us the story in its entirety. The book starts with the invention of the MP3. As an audio format, the industry was not all that interested and it was nearly scrapped. Consumers, however, latched on, surprising everyone with its soaring popularity. Witt gives us an inside view of the pirate networks, which were, and perhaps still are, a culture all their own. The music industry remained stubbornly determined to stick to their status quo, refusing to acknowledge that their consumers were changing the rules, with or without them.Stephen Witt's research is impeccable. The content flows well, and is both interesting and enlightening. If you want to know the truth about how and why music became free, as well as just how badly the select few running the music industry failed, definitely read this book.*I was given a copy of this book by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.*
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great book for any music fan! I highly recommend!
3 people found this helpful