How Music Got Free
by Stephen Witt · first published 2015
73% recommend27% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Narrative history of music piracy and the MP3 format, covering how the technology spread and how Fraunhofer and its creators benefited; recommended for readers curious about the business and tech behind file sharing.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
This book 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 two thousand albums over the course of a d
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Anybody looking to know more about the origins/organization behind What.cd would do well to check out Stephen Witt's monumental book on the subject: How Music Got Free (https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/01431...)
on “What.CD is shutting down” ↗I highly recommend "How Music Got Free" for an entertaining and illuminating read of MP3 and how it changed the world - for the better or worse. It also delves into how Fraunhofer (and its creator) benefited monetarily from its adoption.…
on “The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated” ↗A great book on the recent history of music piracy and the advent of the MP3 is How Music Got Free: https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/01431...
on “Theft: A History of Music” ↗Why Tom's Dinner? Because it is a cappella. There's a book "How Music Got Free" by Stephen Witt [1] detailing the history of mp3 format and related events. It is a very good read and there's an explanation Increases in processing power spurred progress. Within a year Brandenburg’s…
on “Listen to what gets lost when an MP3 is made (2015)” ↗The book "How Music Got Free" explores that dynamics. Steve Jobs had an idea for Apple Music to launch as a label, doing direct 50/50 split with an artist instead of opaque label contracts. He'd call Doug Morris (ex-Universal, ex-Warner,…
on “Why Rdio died” ↗…technology was backed by big companies. Only after a decade or so with slow traction mp3 got popular. The developers gave up the idea of mp3 and even decided to stop developing it. This is from a book called "How Music Got Free". I suggest you guys read it :)
on “Ask HN: I've invented / patented something powerful. Now what?” ↗…piracy is inherent, due to the differences between film and music; or is there some alternative reality where we ended up with a one-stop shop for films, as well? For the history of music piracy, I found" How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy" was a good book to read.
on “The lost joy of music piracy” ↗Also read the "how music got free" book, covers allot of that stuff.
on “HandBrake 1.0.0 Released” ↗Ever since reading "How music got free" by Stephen Witt I get a bit annoyed with the MPEG team getting credit for "creating" the mp3. They did more to kill it than to support it.
on “Let's build an MP3-decoder (2008)” ↗Link? EDIT: https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/01431... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/books/review/how-music-go...
on “Let's build an MP3-decoder (2008)” ↗…I detected no technical errors in this article. Napster did have an effect, but this article isnt about that, its about the RNS crew, who released so much stolen music in the 00s. Its from the book "How Music Got Free", and probably has more details you are after.
on “The dawn of online piracy (2015)” ↗