How Music Got Free

The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy

By: Stephen Witt

Narrated by: Stephen Witt

"What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime?"

How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It's about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention, and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes music store.

Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret 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 2,000 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 thrilling audiobook 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. In the pause-resisting tradition of writers like Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright, Witt's deeply reported first book introduces the unforgettable characters - inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers - who revolutionized an entire art form and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.

An irresistible, never-before-told story of greed, cunning, genius, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn't just a story of the music industry - it's a must-listen history of the Internet itself.

©2015 Stephen Witt (P)2015 Hachette Audio

AWESOME book

What did you love best about How Music Got Free?

This was an extremely well written book that told an extremely interesting story and blended 3 stories together in a flawless manner.

What was one of the most memorable moments of How Music Got Free?

Personally, I lived through a lot of the moments in this book and remember vividly owning the first Diamond MP3 player, downloading scores of illegal music through bots on IRC and the progression from Napster, to crap like Kazaa, Limewire and Morpheus to torrents and beyond. Loved it.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Pirate's Delight

Outstanding story well told by the author. Will resonate with many former and current music pirates in tons of fun and interesting ways. Really enjoyed hearing the stories behind the invention of the MP3, the scene, RNS, OiNk's Pink Palace, VEVO and more. Great job!

Must read

This book was amazing.

Perfect mix of interesting info and entertaining stories.

Audio performance was also top notch

Fun

This was an incredible treatment of this issue. I enjoyed every second of it. The author did an incredible job with the topic.

Engaging Narrative of the Rise of the MP3

Any additional comments?

Sometimes books which attempt to weave together different strands of the same story don't work out. However, Witt has managed to successfully do that here in a way that keeps the reader engaged and is framed by a natural successive flow. This work ties together three main stories and characters: 1) the technological innovations which resulted in the MP3 format; 2) the online community of "leakers" who ripped files from the physical CDs and distributed them online; and 3) the higher-ups of the music industry and their reaction (or lack thereof) to the online music movement. In short, Witt does a wonderful job of balancing dense tech-speak, light-hearted prose, and most importantly, a lot of information. Really an amazing job, and as my first audiobook, the delivery, speed, and tone of the narration were all on point!

Literally the story of my childhood.

My friends and I saw the rise and fall of of the digital music era of the late 90’s and early 2000’s so this book took me right back to that time. 5 stars.

Absolutely outstanding

This story should be, will be, must be, made into a movie. So good! Bravo.

Truly an amazing story and I learned a lot!

for someone that's been in the music industry for the last 5 years this was truly an amazing story and I learned a lot about the music business and it's inner workings that I didn't know about before.

Golden!

Stephen Witt is a great, investigative journalist, writer and narrator. You won't be bored for a second.

Really enjoyed it

This was a great history of how it all happened. Detailed and thorough, but not so tedious as to lose the listener, as so many books can.

My only wish is there was more coverage about developments in 2014-2016, such as Spotify, Pandora and even the Tidal debacle, and references about all the other streaming startups that came and went, plus Aople Music and the role of Jimmy Iovine.

But I guess there is always room for a sequel :)