How music got free : the end of an industry, the turn of the century, and the Patient Zero of piracy / Stephen Witt.

9780525426615 (hardcover)
0525426612 (hardcover)

New York : Viking, [2015]

©2015

English

296 pages ; 24 cm

ML3790 .W59 2015

381/.45780266

A story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. Journalist Stephen Witt traces the history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet. Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online -- when, suddenly, all the music ever recorded was available for free. Witt introduces the unforgettable characters -- inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers -- who revolutionized an entire artform, and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.

Includes bibliographical references (271-286) and index.

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