How Music Got Free

I went into this book not knowing much besides the title. I expected more of an in-depth examination of the way that music has become gradually devalued in American society. What I got was something much different but highly engaging.

How Music Got Free is one of those books you'd classify as “narrative nonfiction”: it recounts the facts of its subject with fidelity, but it reads like a fast-paced novel. Witt uses the stories of a select few key players in music technology, business, and piracy, respectively, to tell the story of the massive technological and cultural shift in 21st century music consumption. Witt's book did not teach me quite what I expected to learn, but I ended up learning a lot regardless.

The author's background in journalism is noted in the style of the text. Witt balances his wide vocabulary with clear explanations of the topics at hand, including some that are quite technical, such as the compression process used to reduce the size of .mp3 files. The result is a breezy read (I finished the book in about a week) sans condescension.

There are some mildly distracting flaws in the narrative and in its presentation. The author's insistence on providing detailed physical descriptions of the people about whom he writes is a bit jarring and cartoonish. He also takes a few political jabs at various targets—Alan Greenspan, the Iraq War, capitalism itself—and I agreed with all of these jabs, but they felt a bit out of place. I'm entering really nitpicky territory here, but Witt overuses commas, unnecessarily separating two verbs of a sentence when the subject is not restated.

If you're interested in the effect of piracy on the music industry in the 2000s, you won't regret picking up this book. Witt covers the development of the .mp3 as well, but if you are interested in that area, there are probably better texts to reference, as the engineers themselves become minor players as the narrative progresses.

A very readable account of the rise of the mp3 and its impact on the music industry and consumers.

Witt deftly interweaves the narratives of the scientists and engineers who birthed the new technology and struggled to get it accepted, with music company executives (primarily Doug Morris who worked for several different labels during this tumultuous period) and geeklings on the ground floor of the new fangled internet who were pirating tunes all over the place, much to the chagrin of music bigwigs determined to get those pesky kids. While mostly clear and easy to follow, the author has this dreadful habit of referring to people in multiple ways; the greatest offense is perpetrated against the late Tupac Shakur, who is sometimes Shakur (last name being the standard nomenclature for most individuals most frequently), sometimes Tupac, and sometimes just Pac (as though he is a personal friend who merits a nickname). There's also an intermittent tendency to sound like a snarky bitch, which is intended to be funny but instead sounds like snide insecurity. Nevertheless, the pros outweigh the cons by plenty in this informative chronicle.

This was my first GoodReads FirstReads win (exciting, no?) so thank you to the nice folks at Penguin who sent me an advance review copy.