Aquest llibre conté:

-Els enginyers de so que creen el mp3 (i durant molts anys no es mengen un torrat)
-Com operava la comunitat dels pirates digitals més nocius de la història de la música
-El rap dels 90
-El lent declivi de la indústria discogràfica
-Vevo
-El magnat de la música més influent del món i el seu pas per diferents segells consolidats
-Napster, torrent i els iPod

This was a fascinating look into the underbelly of the music industry and the technology and people who destroyed the old business model. It's three interwoven narratives, focusing on "Dell" Glover, the biggest pirate in the industry's history, premier record exec Doug Morris, and the German group that invented the mp3, which was originally shunned. Witt is a lively and funny writer who humanizes each personality and distills complex cultural trends into memorable anecdotes.

One of my favorite books of the year.

You can read an excerpt here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business

Very informative, and made me very nostalgic for Oink.

The book was a great history of how the music business transitioned from CD's to Digital. They went kicking and screaming due to the pirate revolution of the late 90s and 2000s. Very interesting subject

3 1/2 stars really. Who would have thought the biggest source of leaked albums for the better part of the internet era was Shelby, NC. Learned alot reading this book, the cluelessness of the music industry, its blind attempts to remedy piracy and squash the MP3, and the reasons for the MP3's final triumph as a format.

Wow! These books are usually more tedious, with pages of technical specifications and statistics. This one feels like a thriller, following three key players into the mp3/piracy/music business mess that we've seen since music and computers have become so intertwined. Anyone interested in the topic should pick this up as the author's passion and research keep it moving. It's so engaging I wondered how much embellishment was put onto the facts, as normally this topic doesn't beget page-turners. You might be disappointed to find many important events glossed over or the reader is assumed to know about them, for example Napster is only given a few pages of mention. I guess if the author tried to cover all the angles on his subject then the book would be thousands of pages long, so he focuses on three important ones.
I'd put this alongside [b:How Music Works|13235689|How Music Works|David Byrne|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340792878s/13235689.jpg|18433052] if you are looking for books that go a long way towards describing the confusing current state of music in a readable way.

First third has a lot of technical jargon about mp2 and mp3 that made it slower but the second half is PHENOMENAL. The pace picked up a lot and I loved everything about the fbi and piracy suits and the uncovering of everything. Obsessed

In which a man who works in a CD factory brings down the CD industry. The music industry comes out of this very badly.

How Music Got Free is a compelling story that traces the development of the MP3 to it's utilization by a number of underground early-internet-adopter audiophiles who created music-piracy groups and ultimately caused the adaption of the music industry to the post-cd era. Despite a scope that largely fails to investigate the impact on actual music artists nor the advent of streaming, the story Witt tells is pretty remarkable. Dell Glover, the antihero of the story, is a fascinating, if somewhat tragic, character, who defies and ultimately is brought to heel by the multibillion dollar recording industry.

However, within this fascinating story, Witt smuggles in several ideas/themes that i just can't agree with. The first is his uncritical analysis and overt defense of the efficacy of IP Law. Secondly is his general omission of actual musicians experiences with music piracy or the changing dynamics of the recording industry in the 2000's. To this point, Witt fails to address the deep inequities created by the recording industry and their cynical weaponization of public resources to stamp out competition. Thirdly, Witt continuously speaks about the drastic economic losses caused by piracy but fails to address the question of "to whom".

With those critiques in mind, I would still recommend How Music Got Free due to the compelling nature of the overall story and Witt's dedication to approaching this phenomenon from the perspectives of (almost) all the major players.