Scan barcode
A review by marya_
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
A little dense, if you’re not used to reading non-fiction but extremely educational. I found out about this book (and another one called The Nineties) after watching an extremely informative YouTube video by Mic the Snare: The Music that Defined the 1990s. The title is self-explanatory and it is pretty obvious that you cannot separate the evolution of 90s music from the technological boom of the decade. I absolutely loved it, and needed to know more.
I read The Nineties first, which is more of a complete picture of the USA during that period, and I was mesmerised with its first two chapters —those about music and technology, of course. This book takes both topics and explains them in great detail (sometimes even too much, that’s my only complaint). It’s all modern history, with facts that every Millennial will more or less remember, but contextualised and linked throughout the years (from the mid-90s to the early 2010s), based on first hand testimonies. Highly recommended. I can see it made into a Netflix limited series, just like The Playlist and The Billion Dollar Code.
I read The Nineties first, which is more of a complete picture of the USA during that period, and I was mesmerised with its first two chapters —those about music and technology, of course. This book takes both topics and explains them in great detail (sometimes even too much, that’s my only complaint). It’s all modern history, with facts that every Millennial will more or less remember, but contextualised and linked throughout the years (from the mid-90s to the early 2010s), based on first hand testimonies. Highly recommended. I can see it made into a Netflix limited series, just like The Playlist and The Billion Dollar Code.