How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy (Also published as How Music Got Free: What Happens When an Entire Generation Commits the Same Crime? , How Music Got Free: The Inventor, The Mogul and the Thief , and How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention ) is a non-fiction book by journalist Stephen Witt. The book chronicles the invention of the MP3 format for audio information, detailing the efforts by researchers such as Karlheinz Brandenburg , Bernhard Grill and Harald Popp to analyze human hearing and successfully compress songs in a form that can be easily transmitted. Witt also documents the rise of the warez scene and spread of copyright-infringing efforts online while detailing the campaigns by music industry executives such as Doug Morris to adapt to changing technology.
14-490: The publisher Viking distributed the work on June 16, 2015. The book has received praise from publications such as Kirkus Reviews and The Washington Post . The book notes that, at a presentation to the Fraunhofer Society , Brandenburg and his team's presentation of the technology that could re-create the fidelity of a recording on a CD at one-twelfth the size created a stir. "Do you realize what you’ve done?" asked
28-404: A listener to the team. "You’ve killed the music industry!" "On websites and underground file servers across the world," Witt states, "the number of mp3 files in existence grew by several orders of magnitude. In dorm rooms everywhere incoming college freshmen found their hard drives filled to capacity with pirated mp3s". He also writes, "Music piracy became to the late ’90s what drug experimentation
42-401: A two-part documentary based on Witt's book was released. Directed by Alex Stapleton , it features interviews with musical artists Eminem , Timbaland , and former record executive Jimmy Iovine . The Guardian reviewer writes: "Today, everyone knows just how bad a thing that turned out to be for the music industry, nearly destroying it by the early 2000s. What most people don't know, however,
56-517: Is the story behind the people who created the technology that made this revolution possible, as well as the group of kids who first figured out how to use its tools so enticingly. That’s the tale told by a thought-provoking and highly entertaining new docuseries titled How Music Got Free." Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin , also listed as Viking Books ) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House . It
70-592: The Rabid Neurosis (RNS) group to illegally spread copyrighted material . A North Carolina manufacturing plant employee named Dell Glover, his life described in detail by Witt, discovers that he has the ability to get his hands on albums before their official release dates and goes on to work with RNS leaking hundreds upon hundreds of discs. Artists such as Mary J. Blige , Mariah Carey , Eminem , Kanye West , and Jay Z have their material distributed online due to Glover's actions. Witt states that Glover and RNS became
84-730: The Yangtze River . Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". Ping, the duck, lives on a boat on the Yangtze River in China. Every day he and his duck family are taken by their owner to feed on the riverbank. Later, when it is evening, Ping is the last duck to return to the boat, so he hides to avoid being spanked. The following day Ping, feeling lost, begins to swim in search of his family. Along
98-489: The Speak and Firebird imprints. In 2023, Tamar Brazis was named v-p and publisher of Viking Children's Books. The Viking Critical Library offers academic editions of literary texts . Like W. W. Norton 's Norton Critical Editions , all titles print the text alongside a selection of critical essays and contextual documents (including relevant extracts from the author's oeuvre). The series, which only saw sporadic publications in
112-499: The book, with Bayard commenting that he found the work "whip-smart, superbly reported, and indispensable". Bayard additionally stated that technology has created a period of "uneasy times, and no one should go too easy on himself", finding the recent trends troubling himself. Kirkus Reviews ran a praising response to the book, with it labeled as a "propulsive and fascinating portrait of the people who helped upend an industry and challenge how music and media are consumed". In June 2024,
126-407: The late '70s and late '90s, has been dormant since 1998, with no new titles released since then. However, a number of existing titles remain in print. The Story About Ping The Story About Ping is a popular American children's book written by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese . First published in 1933, Ping is an illustrated story about a domesticated Chinese duck lost on
140-422: The way, Ping observes some cormorant fishing birds. A boy captures Ping, but releases him later that evening to prevent Ping from becoming the family's dinner. Upon being released, he sees his master's boat. He hurries to return to his family knowing he will be the last duck again, but this time he accepts the punishment. The Story About Ping was adapted for film by Weston Woods Studios in 1955. Because of
154-532: The world’s premier music pirates, possibly costing the record industry millions of dollars. The book describes how the then CEO of Universal Music Group , Doug Morris , attempted to weather the storm created by technological changes given the evolution of social culture. Witt comments that "the uniform blandness of the corporate sound wasn’t helping" and gives a mixed picture as to how Morris and other executives dealt with falling sales. The Washington Post published an article by writer Louis Bayard praising
SECTION 10
#1732872603250168-514: Was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975. In 1933, Viking Press founded a department called Junior Books to publish children's books. The first book published was The Story About Ping in 1933 under editor May Massee . Junior Books was later renamed Viking Children's Books. Viking Kestrel
182-580: Was one of its imprints . Its books have won the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, and include such books as The Twenty-One Balloons , written and illustrated by William Pene du Bois (1947, Newbery medal winner for 1948), Corduroy , Make Way for Ducklings , The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (1993), The Outsiders , Pippi Longstocking , and The Story of Ferdinand . Its paperbacks are now published by Puffin Books , which includes
196-408: Was to the late ’60s: a generation-wide flouting of both social norms and the existing body of law, with little thought of consequences." The book recounts how many people wound up building massive archives of music for little other than the thrill created by finding and sorting the information. Witt writes about the obscure online community known as ' The Scene ', particularly describing the efforts of
#249750