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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
Fascinating story of how the music industry went from selling CDs to chasing piracy rings. The story of how the .mp3 came to be popular was interesting, but the chapters following Dell Glover were the most engaging. He enabled his "scene" to leak tons of top releases by smuggling CDs out of the packaging line. I remember the rise of Napster, Kazaa, Limewire and BitTorrent. All of that hit right as I started college and got high-speed internet. This book provides a great behind-the-scenes of how that happened.
I went into this book not knowing much besides the title. I expected more of an in-depth examination of the way that music has become gradually devalued in American society. What I got was something much different but highly engaging.
How Music Got Free is one of those books you'd classify as "narrative nonfiction": it recounts the facts of its subject with fidelity, but it reads like a fast-paced novel. Witt uses the stories of a select few key players in music technology, business, and piracy, respectively, to tell the story of the massive technological and cultural shift in 21st century music consumption. Witt's book did not teach me quite what I expected to learn, but I ended up learning a lot regardless.
The author's background in journalism is noted in the style of the text. Witt balances his wide vocabulary with clear explanations of the topics at hand, including some that are quite technical, such as the compression process used to reduce the size of .mp3 files. The result is a breezy read (I finished the book in about a week) sans condescension.
There are some mildly distracting flaws in the narrative and in its presentation. The author's insistence on providing detailed physical descriptions of the people about whom he writes is a bit jarring and cartoonish. He also takes a few political jabs at various targets—Alan Greenspan, the Iraq War, capitalism itself—and I agreed with all of these jabs, but they felt a bit out of place. I'm entering really nitpicky territory here, but Witt overuses commas, unnecessarily separating two verbs of a sentence when the subject is not restated. The most distracting typographical error of all comes early on; on page 17 the text refers to Thomson as "a French consumer electronics concern" [sic], which left me scratching my head for a bit. I presume that the author intended the word "company."
If you're interested in the effect of piracy on the music industry in the 2000s, you won't regret picking up this book. Witt covers the development of the .mp3 as well, but if you are interested in that area, there are probably better texts to reference, as the engineers themselves become minor players as the narrative progresses.
How Music Got Free is one of those books you'd classify as "narrative nonfiction": it recounts the facts of its subject with fidelity, but it reads like a fast-paced novel. Witt uses the stories of a select few key players in music technology, business, and piracy, respectively, to tell the story of the massive technological and cultural shift in 21st century music consumption. Witt's book did not teach me quite what I expected to learn, but I ended up learning a lot regardless.
The author's background in journalism is noted in the style of the text. Witt balances his wide vocabulary with clear explanations of the topics at hand, including some that are quite technical, such as the compression process used to reduce the size of .mp3 files. The result is a breezy read (I finished the book in about a week) sans condescension.
There are some mildly distracting flaws in the narrative and in its presentation. The author's insistence on providing detailed physical descriptions of the people about whom he writes is a bit jarring and cartoonish. He also takes a few political jabs at various targets—Alan Greenspan, the Iraq War, capitalism itself—and I agreed with all of these jabs, but they felt a bit out of place. I'm entering really nitpicky territory here, but Witt overuses commas, unnecessarily separating two verbs of a sentence when the subject is not restated. The most distracting typographical error of all comes early on; on page 17 the text refers to Thomson as "a French consumer electronics concern" [sic], which left me scratching my head for a bit. I presume that the author intended the word "company."
If you're interested in the effect of piracy on the music industry in the 2000s, you won't regret picking up this book. Witt covers the development of the .mp3 as well, but if you are interested in that area, there are probably better texts to reference, as the engineers themselves become minor players as the narrative progresses.
informative
tense
medium-paced
I love a secret history, and Stephen Witt's How Music Got Free tells the story of how the invention of the mp3, its subsequent adoption by early online pirates, and the bemusement of music execs led to the new status quo where we all pay a tenner each month for Spotify, and have the whole history of recorded music at our fingertips.
Witt's diligent research into the nascent online piracy community is remarkable, and the story he has uncovered (of an employee at a CD production plant who was responsible for leaking several of the biggest albums of the noughties), brings a hitherto untold story to brilliant life. I was initially a bit sceptical of the tying together of the stories of the mp3's founders, the music exec and the pirate, but it came together brilliantly to tell a holistic story.
For anyone interested in the topic it's a must read, but I think anyone who has ever bought a CD, downloaded a song, or paid for a Spotify subscription could find something in here to understand the seismic shifts that have occurred in the music over the last ~25 years.
Witt's diligent research into the nascent online piracy community is remarkable, and the story he has uncovered (of an employee at a CD production plant who was responsible for leaking several of the biggest albums of the noughties), brings a hitherto untold story to brilliant life. I was initially a bit sceptical of the tying together of the stories of the mp3's founders, the music exec and the pirate, but it came together brilliantly to tell a holistic story.
For anyone interested in the topic it's a must read, but I think anyone who has ever bought a CD, downloaded a song, or paid for a Spotify subscription could find something in here to understand the seismic shifts that have occurred in the music over the last ~25 years.
Excellent journalism, truly, introducing us to the man - yes literally it was a single man - who leaked basically every major CD release in the peak mp3 & torrent era, all in context of the labels' and feds' and audio engineers' simultaneous stories. As a child of this era, it enriched my knowledge of my own listening and music curation experience. Would have loved one more chapter on what was lost when OiNK and later what.cd were taken down.
I liked this book a lot. It is an impressive historic review around the way modern society produces and consumes music. It dig down to the hole of massive piracy to the big companies. It is well written and backed by and impressive amount of curious stories. I recommend this book to everyone that have music as a second lover. It is a political economical and social analysis with music at the heart of it. Very good read indeed.
Cannot get over how much I got out of this book! I listened to it on audiobook read by the author (he's a good reader!) but it would probably be easier to retain the details if reading it as a regular book. This backstory is just so interesting, especially in Witt's format for delivery - focusing on 3 storylines: inventor, record industry, pirate. I'm giving it 4 instead of 5 because I think my love for the book is in part due to the personal hooks of being a fairly large consumer of music and having definitely streamed Big Pimpin' from a questionable source over a university network back in the day.
~ I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads in exchange for an honest review ~
I have never been so enthralled with such an educational read.
The story of the invention of the MP3 through to modern day was a lot more intense than I had thought it was, and this narrative had me on the edge of my seat, willing myself not to google anything so that I could enjoy every surprise along the way. The three story lines worked really well together, and it's very obvious right from the start that Mr. Witt has spent as much time and effort as possible to get all of the facts. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever listened to music, and can see myself returning to read it again in the future.
I have never been so enthralled with such an educational read.
The story of the invention of the MP3 through to modern day was a lot more intense than I had thought it was, and this narrative had me on the edge of my seat, willing myself not to google anything so that I could enjoy every surprise along the way. The three story lines worked really well together, and it's very obvious right from the start that Mr. Witt has spent as much time and effort as possible to get all of the facts. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever listened to music, and can see myself returning to read it again in the future.
challenging
dark
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced