How Music Got Free summary

Armed with decent-sounding compressed files and funding from AT&T, the Fraunhofer team was set to submit their work to the technical standards committee: the Moving Picture Experts Group, or MPEG.

While awaiting approval from MPEG, the team was oblivious to what lay ahead: a format war and a host of political battles.

Even though the financial support from the NHL helped keep the mp3 afloat, the Fraunhofer team knew it wouldn’t be the answer to winning the format war in the long term. They weren’t discouraged, though, as they knew they had a superior format. What they needed was for people to listen to it.

So the team decided to make a bold move that would, unbeknownst to them, mark the beginning of the music-pirating revolution. In 1995, under the threat of being driven out of business by the Philips-backed mp2 format, the Fraunhofer team decided to give away their mp3 conversion software – called L3Enc – and their PC mp3 player application – called WinPlay3 – for free on their website.

If you downloaded mp3s between 1998 and 2008, as incalculable numbers of people did, chances are most of the files came from one small town in North Carolina. Here’s how it all began:

The biggest mp3 pirate in the world, a man by the name of Dell Glover, had rather humble beginnings as a computer hobbyist who happened to be an employee at the PolyGram CD-pressing plant in North Carolina.

In 1998, while Glover was in cahoots with RNS, PolyGram and Universal Music merged. As a result, security measures at the plant became more stringent. However, the merger also meant that Glover now had access to the most sought-after music in the world.

Glover didn’t actually steal the CDs himself, though. Rather, he coordinated with coworkers and informed them about which CDs Kali was requesting. And despite random searches, X-Rays and closely observed inventory, CDs somehow always managed to make their way out of the plant.

Getting busted for releasing The Fix was a huge blow to the whole RNS operation, but soon things began picking up. After seven years working at the plant, Glover was promoted to assistant manager. Thanks to access to security information and his new role in scheduling shifts, he was then in an even better position than ever to sneak out CDs for RNS.

Yet, both Glover and Kali knew that they had to take more precautions if they were to continue without getting caught. After the The Fix incident, Glover stepped back from RNS for a few months, but when he returned in early 2003, he put together a safer approach where leaks would be postponed until two weeks before their public release date, when the discs had actually left the plant.

For a while, arguably the most powerful person in the music industry was Doug Morris. He worked for Universal and brought some great labels into the Universal Music Group. It was a line-up of artists from Marilyn Manson and No Doubt to rap powerhouses like Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Eminem.

Thus, when Universal and Polygram merged in 1998, earnings forecasts seemed impressive. Except that the impact of the internet was completely ignored.

When Napster died out, the idea behind it evolved into massively popular torrent sites like PirateBay. In reaction, labels and the RIAA were forced to come to terms with the changing market.

Universal and other labels still filed new lawsuits, even though labels like Warner Brothers disputed the tactic of continuously filing them.

Despite the numerous lawsuits filed over the years by RIAA and other labels, it has done very little to deter the general public from pirating. In fact, when those responsible for supplying pirated music were put on trial, the results opened up an alternative perspective on copyright law.

People all over the world became increasingly reluctant to punish others for file sharing.

Over the last few years, the public’s preferred way to listen to music has continued to evolve and as CDs go extinct, music-streaming sites like Spotify have become the standard.

Unsurprisingly, research has shown that the majority of Spotify users have indeed stopped pirating music, but with this they have also stopped buying albums.