How Music Got Free

Starred review from June 6, 2016
As journalist Witt engagingly explains, in 2011, Americans spent more money on live concerts than on recorded music; in 2012, sales of digital music surpassed sales of CDs; and in 2013, revenues from subscription and advertiser-supported-streaming took in billions of dollars. Thanks to piracy and clever technicians, music got free of vinyl and CDs and entered more portable formats, and it also became free for individuals to download or stream widely. Drawing on interviews, Witt profiles various individuals who played crucial roles in the rise of digital music. In the late 1980s and in the early 1990s, a group of German scientists and technicians invented the mp3, the technology that later audio pirates would use to share files of the latest music. Dell Glover, according to Witt, is likely the greatest music pirate of all time; in cahoots with Rabid Neurosis, an online organization run by someone called Kali, Glover leaks over 2,000 CDs to the internet over the course of eight years. Witt engages in careful analysis of the trial of Glover and his associates; the Texas jury decided that the "laws that prohibited piracy did not have to be obeyed," regardless of the economic damage done to the record labels. Witt also writes about music executive Doug Morris, who rose rapidly through the ranks of various record companies to bring Tupac Shakur, Suge Knight, and Dr. Dre to the world. This captivating book goes behind the scenes to help readers understand the current state of the music industry.

May 1, 2015
A history of the music industry's reckoning with digital technology, the Internet, and the "pirate generation." Since file-sharing software pioneer Napster's public meltdown, illegal downloading has grown into so widespread a practice that, as journalist Witt notes, most people think of it as a victimless crime. Others, like the author himself, began building massive archives of music for no reason other than the thrill of accumulation. It was this peculiar impulse that drove Witt to consider how digital music became the industry's dominant format and how illegal access to it became so pervasive. His examination focuses on the German engineering team of Karlheinz Brandenburg and Bernhard Grill, who painstakingly developed and sold MP3 technology to corporate partners; former CEO of Universal Music Group Doug Morris; and the previously untold story of Dell Glover, a worker at a Polygram CD factory in the 1990s who single-handedly leaked thousands of albums through his association with the Internet's foremost pirate group, Rabid Neurosis. Through their stories, Witt chronicles the fall of the traditional record industry and the emergence of pirate culture typified by sites like Pirate Bay and OiNK, which increasingly viewed music as a free commodity. The author also crucially points out that while pirating contributed to the industry's decline, he counters that "the uniform blandness of the corporate sound wasn't helping." Witt is a sympathetic observer who captures the complexity of the pirate ethos (they made little to no money from leaks), the conundrum of developers creating technologies like BitTorrent to facilitate file sharing, and the music industry's misguided attempts to prosecute pirates. Ultimately, the industry's battle with file sharing is one of the first examples of how the Internet most dramatically changed business and society. A propulsive and fascinating portrait of the people who helped upend an industry and challenge how music and media are consumed.

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May 15, 2015

Witt's history of piracy and payola scandals begins in the 1980s with Karlheinz Brandenburg and his Fraunhofer Institute, as they struggled to entice the music industry with their creation: the MP3. Woven into this time line are the narratives of two people on opposite ends of the Universal Music Group hierarchy. Millionaire mogul Doug Morris commercialized rap (e.g., Jay Z, Eminem, Kanye West) and reigned over labels such as Def Jam and Aftermath. At a PolyGram plant in North Carolina, Dell Glover shrink-wrapped and smuggled the latest releases, becoming a kingpin within Rabid Neurosis, a file-sharing group that leaked more than 20,000 albums between 1996 and 2007. This riveting detective story delves into the format wars (MP2, MP3, AAC, WMA) and the legacy of Napster along with the music industry's response: numerous RIAA lawsuits and the creation of Vevo to monetize YouTube. The author argues that the transition from album-oriented rock to singles-oriented pop (i.e., the end of "forced bundling"), not piracy, led to the ongoing decline in music sales. VERDICT Witt's expose of the business of mainstream music will intrigue fans and critics of pop culture and anyone who has bought a compact disc, downloaded an MP3, or used a streaming music service. [See Prepub Alert, 12/8/14.]--Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015
Karlheinz Brandenburg. James Anthony Dockery. Bennie Lydell Glover. Doug Morris. Chances are you have never heard of these men, yet, Witt reveals, they played key roles in the transformation and rapid decline of the global music industry. Witt admits that he was part of the problem. By the time he arrived at college in 1997, when he never even heard of an mp3, to 2005, when he moved to New York, he had downloaded some 15,000 albums worth of music. I haven't purchased an album with my own money since the turn of the millennium, he confesses. He began to wonder who was doing the actual pirating of the files and how they know how to do it. In this fascinating study, Witt digs deep and uncovers the engineers, executives, and employees who played a part in the crippling of the music industry as he follows the trail from Germany to a small town in North Carolina. A must-read for anyone who wonders how we got from there (CDs) to here (mp3s, cloud computing, Google Play, Spotify, and more).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)