Author:Stephen Witt
It’s hardly news that the last fifteen years or so have seen massive technologically driven change in the music industry. There’s a narrative that everyone knows, but under that there is a much deeper story that has remained largely untold until now.
The book follows three main strands. There’s the story of the German research team who invented the mp3, and their difficulties in launching it amid format wars and arguments over standards. There’s Doug Morris, the powerful record company executive who gets the internet completely wrong but then monetizes the hell out of it at the eleventh hour, and then there’s Dell Glover. Glover’s is the story you probably don’t know. He worked at a CD pressing plant in North Carolina, and was also an early adopting computer geek. Through him, we discover a darknet of exclusive topsites, warez and organised piracy. Glover embraced this scene with open arms, and was soon smuggling prerelease discs out of his factory and uploading them. His team was responsible for leaking 20,000 albums over a decade, and kept one step ahead of the FBI for almost as long. And yet Glover is an engaging character who you can’t hep rooting for just a little bit, stupid tattoos and all.
These stories are the core of the book, but along the way there are digressions into BitTorrent, and Oink. There are so many little titbits that you’ll read and think “I never knew that”, like the head of the RIAA being vehemently against the idea of suing filesharers. More than anything else, it reminded me of a long form version of the kind of journalism we like to remember Word magazine being full of. It’s a terrifc read, pacy and thrilling. One could even call it – excuse me – a ripping yarn.
Length of Read:Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Anyone who has been paying attention to the music industry in recent times
One thing you’ve learned
The mp3 format was allowed such a long gestation time because the German government funding the research knew there were huge sums of money to be made via the patent and (ba-dum tish) copyright licensing. It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.
—>
I can understand why people download music. That makes sense to me.
What I don’t get is why people upload it for others to take. Firstly, you’re who the authorities will be after, not the guys leeching it. Secondly, what’s in it for you?
At first, with the likes of Napster, we all just shared the music. Whatever you downloaded was there for others to take. Then came the folks who just downloaded and shared nothing (because uploading slowed your download speed). I stopped doing all this many years ago, but when using torrent sites, you could only download so much before you had to upload. You had to have a certaindownload/upload ratio before you could download any more.
Is it just attention? Like being the first guy to post the RIP thread in here when a musician dies? 😉
Beolab1700 – flac downloads of virtually every essential recording ever made. For example, the 18cd Dylan Bootleg which retails at around $500. The list is endless. I envisage a Crumb-like character toking an enormous joint in front of banks of high-tech recording decks listening to Fare Thee Well whilst muttering “Everything Must Be Free”.
That’s the only answer I have to Poppy’s question.
That’s a really interesting point PoppySucceeds.
I can completely understand why people download but who can be arsed uploading stuff or setting up a server so people can torrent it? (Uploading on most domestic ISPs is deadly slow and this stuff needs putting on a machine that is a server or ‘always on’ – consuming electricity)
Is it a political motivation from Pirate Party folks and their ilk who believe that all music and films should be free and nobody deserves to get paid (regardless of whether you’re Elton John or Vini Reilly who isn’t physically well enough to earn a living playing live and struggles to pay his rent)…a principle they believe so much they go to considerable lengths to make this stuff available? God knows.
henpetsgi’s point about attention seekers certainly applies to YouTube uploaders – I guess if they upload something they get more hits and comments on their profile so maybe that’s a motivation.
meanwhile Adele can still sell over 500,000 CDs in one week (plus 250,000 paid downloads) – Vinyl prices are soaring and more record shops are opening than closing so all bets are off.
@poppy-succeeds This is a great book and it does explain why Glover went to the lengths he did. The thrill of it all, being prized by an (online) community, the kudos of being first to leak an album, that kind of thing.
yes, kudos and scene cred are / were big motivators, but another important element was access. Prove your usefulness with good leaks, and the people running the topsites would give you the passwords to servers full of other material. Glover in particular turned this into a very profitable DVD bootlegging business.
I just finished this. What an amazing tale, incredible that it hasn’t been told until now.
There’s a film on Netflix called Downloaded which covers Napster and the leaks at the pressing plants. Worth a watch.
…I had no idea… is it related to this book?
Don’t think so, just overlaps subject matter.
http://www.downloadedthemovie.com/
I knew that sounded familiar…. here’s an article from the New Yorker by the same author on the same subject……
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business
I think it was probably originally posted on here.
Great book.
Interestingly, Adele sold all those albums, ( not forgetting the 2 million plus in the US) having decided against putting it on Spotify and the other streaming services. There was a particularly hilarious article about this in the New Yorker, written by a bloke complaining bitterly that he couldn’t hear the Adele album despite having ( as he saw it) having ‘paid’for it as part of his Spotify sub.
“The music must be free, man”. I think it was better when we traded C90s.
@ernietothecentreoftheearth
Correlation is not causation. Adele didn’t sell all those albums because she wasn’t on Spotify. She is an outlier who’s sales were going to be huge no matter what. People were so invested in her, and such fans of 21, that buying the new album was not going to be seen as a risk. If you want a copy of the Adele album for free, it’s there on the internet if you know what to do.
The two main arguements for using Spotify et al is that they generate interest and prevent piracy. Adele doesn’t need help with the former, and the sales are so great and reassured, everyone’s relaxed about the latter.
Adele, and Taylor Swift, are big enough to do such things.
Compare to Coldplay. If memory serves, MyloXyloto was off streaming for a few months when it first came out because they were a big band following up a big album. I don’t see them taking that route with the new album this week.
I didn’t intend to suggwat that she had sold all those albums because she wasn’t on Spotify. Although ai still suspect that she sold rather more than she might have done otherwise. My substantive point was the suggestion from some people that not making it available on Spotify was in some way unfair.
In any event, I am sure her co-writers are delighted at the prospect of earning more upfront than they might have done if it had gone straight on to Spotify.
@ernietothecentreoftheearth Fair enough, sorry for misunderstanding. And you’re right, I’m sure she sold *some* more because she wasn’t on streaming, but I think that’s a rule that only applies to her, Swift, Rihanna, and a few others. People are desperate to hear it. For everyone else, holding your stuff off streaming would probably just get a few shrugged shoulders, no extra sales.
I have to admit, I love Spotify as a consumer but still don’t see what’s in it for the talent. I could understand it if *every* new release was kept off Spotify for a while, and I’d still pay for Spotify if that was the case. Like hardbacks being followed by paperbacks or Movies followed by DVDs, physical followed by streaming has a logic to it. But what do I know?
Agreed. I also love Spotify, not least because I spend a fraction of what I used to. But I still don’t understand how the sums add up.
Incidentally, one fact that struck me was that Adele’s album sold as many copies as the combined total of the next 80 top sellers in the album chart. Now I know it’s a huge seller, but even so – it’s hardly a quiet time of year.