ability to download what you want, whenever you want, free of any charge or penalty, is, of course, a key reason why the music industry has been caught up in a struggle to survive. The Internet’s effect has been staggering. In 1994, more than 40 albums sold at least a million copies on release; in 2014, that figure dropped to just two (Taylor Swift’s “1989” and the “Frozen” soundtrack).
After the Internet, writes Witt, there was no longer any need to be a music “collector.” When you went online, “the music was simply there.” For free.
But Witt’s book is more than just a simple history — or defense — of file sharing, a development most people associate with Napster, but which, according to Witt, involved a much more wide-ranging — and fascinating — story.
“How Music Got Free” examines the subject from three angles: the development of the MP3 sound file (used on iPods and other devices); the life and crimes of the man Witt calls the “Patient Zero of Internet music piracy,” who leaked hundreds of compact discs from the record plant where he worked; and how the music industry ignored the changing technology, then scrambled to catch up with it.
One of the ironies Witt uncovers is that the MP3 was long considered a poor relation in the sound file family. The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the organization that sets standards for consumer audio and video products, had opted to push the rival format, MP2, instead. But just as the MP3 was on the verge of being retired by its creators, its software was pirated and leaked online. Music fans thus had the tools they needed to convert CDs to MP3 files and share them with a worldwide Internet audience.
But it’s the story of “Patient Zero” — Bennie Lydell “Dell” Glover — that’s the most fascinating. Glover, an employee at PolyGram’s CD manufacturing plant in Kings Mountain, N.C., was well positioned to get his hands on upcoming albums by popular acts such as Lil Wayne, Dr. Dre and Eminem, then leak them weeks before the official release date. Glover didn’t leak music for profit, but simply because he could. The descriptions of the elaborate subterfuge he utilized to smuggle out his booty gives Witt’s narrative the air of a crime thriller.
Witt might have done better to make Glover’s story the main one, instead of alternating chapters on each topic, which breaks up the momentum. Not only is Glover’s the most compelling saga, it’s also the real key to how music “got free.”
The new technology that made this easier to do only reinforced the notion that recorded music wasn’t something worth paying for anymore — which has been bad news for artists, as well as record companies.