Presently reading:
How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry. The Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy.
The author's approach is fascinating - the chapters interweave three stories - that of the two men who developed MP3 technology for Fraunhofer, two unassuming low-level shrink wrappers and box droppers at a Polygram plant who became responsible for over 90% of the leaks at the birth of the digital revolution, and the story of Doug Morris, who ran the Universal Music Group from 1995 to 2011.
He reveals the inside story of how the first two men offered MP3 technology to the heads of the music industry, even suggesting that it could be used to stream music from a central commercial source for a subscription rate (and this was in 1996!), but the industry had no interest and used their financial clout to bury MP3 in favor of the inferior MP2 format backed by all their corporate contacts. (Beta, anyone?)
And we all know what happened from there.
The book is outlined brilliantly and reveals intimate conversations between the men who took down an entire industry. And it poses the question, "What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime?"
How Music Got Free is the story of three individuals whom you've likely never heard of. But it's written all over your hard drive.
