A review by eliaszuniga
How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy by Stephen Richard Witt

5.0

Witt's “How Music Got Free” is essentially a history of the mp3 digital music format. Using his professor’s research into human hearing, Karlheinz Brandenburg, a German university student, constructed algorithms that shrunk audio data to 1/12th of its size. Though it was technically superior to Phillips’ and the Motion Picture Experts Group’s (“MPEG”) competing formats, Brandenburg had a difficult time trying to market the format, losing to the much more experienced rivals not on technological merits, but by being out-marketed and even downright trickery. Nevertheless, the indefatigable (at one time while inventing the format he listened to Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” 600 times in a row) Brandenburg would eventually prevail, unknowingly unleashing the tool that the Warez scene and other hackers would use to fundamentally change the entire music industry. Witt includes other players such as Doug Morris, an old white guy and brilliant executive with an ear for hit music, who would make much more money off “gangsta rap” than Kanye West, Shawn Carter (“Jay Z”), and Curtis Jackson (“50 cent”). Morris would create VEVO after watching Curtis Jackson’s “In Da Club” music video with his grandson on Youtube.

Witt’s account is thorough, and, most of all, highly entertaining. In it we’re introduced to “douchebag rockers Nickelback.” (Apparently “douchebag rock” refers to an actual music genre (like “hard rock,” and “classic rock,” for example).) In describing Tupac’s nascent posthumous album sales, Witt writes, “Tupac’s death was a senseless tragedy, but it was also a great career move.” If you enjoyed the movie “The Social Network,” you’ll enjoy this fast, interesting read; it’s much better.