cyborgforty 's review for:

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

4.5

medium-paced

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Well-written and well-researched. I really enjoyed reading this. Some of the corporate stuff bored me a bit but different strokes for different folks—overall I enjoyed the pacing and thought focusing on the people he did was a good choice. Kinda wish there was more on how streaming services came to be. But coming in, I knew jack shit about the history of piracy or the MP3 and this was a thorough introduction. And I loved the note at the end: starting with a document, chasing stories for years and years until you have a book's worth of history that no one has thought to write down before.