Music game same as it ever was
By Dana Jennings |
August 16, 2009, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
I spent countless rapt hours taping my favorite songs off the radio when I was a kid. There were so many tunes, and I had so little money.
But even back then, the record companies considered someone like me a sneak thief, a young blackguard. By taping, I was taking money out of their pockets, bread off the table and cocaine from the noses of their artists and executives.
That battle between customer and music company has only intensified since. The listener screams, "Love!" The music executive screams, "Theft!" And the musician - same as it ever was - screams, "Pay me!" Now Greg Kot, a music critic and co-host of a rock 'n' roll radio talk show, tells us what happened in "Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music," his well-reported book about music in the Internet Age.
"Ripped" ranges from the days when the record companies gnashed their teeth over the growth of home taping, to music publishers' blunt attacks on sampling in hip-hop, to the life, death and canonization of Napster, to the iPod and beyond.
It also examines the constant consolidation - in music companies, in radio, in concert promotion - that helped lead to the industry's implosion.
Then there are the abject listeners, dissatisfied with the non-fat vanilla being dispensed on the radio and in the record stores - Backstreet Boys, anyone? But once they discover peer-to-peer file sharing and CD burners, there's no holding them back. The record companies try their strong-arm tactics and lose. They can't cope with the guerrilla savvy of kids with computers and a bottomless thirst for music.
Kot also writes about how established artists like Prince, Radiohead and Wilco thrived in the digital age because they didn't sit around and whine like emo punks while musical civilization as we know it crumbled. He pays homage to acts that emerged during the turmoil and used it to their advantage.
The most fascinating part of the book is its retelling of how the big music companies committed capitalist suicide.
The executives couldn't get their analog heads around the digital future. If industry leaders had always followed their mistrust of technology, we'd still be listening to music on 78-r.p.m. shellac, or maybe even wax cylinders.
But even back then, the record companies considered someone like me a sneak thief, a young blackguard. By taping, I was taking money out of their pockets, bread off the table and cocaine from the noses of their artists and executives.
That battle between customer and music company has only intensified since. The listener screams, "Love!" The music executive screams, "Theft!" And the musician - same as it ever was - screams, "Pay me!" Now Greg Kot, a music critic and co-host of a rock 'n' roll radio talk show, tells us what happened in "Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music," his well-reported book about music in the Internet Age.
"Ripped" ranges from the days when the record companies gnashed their teeth over the growth of home taping, to music publishers' blunt attacks on sampling in hip-hop, to the life, death and canonization of Napster, to the iPod and beyond.
It also examines the constant consolidation - in music companies, in radio, in concert promotion - that helped lead to the industry's implosion.
Then there are the abject listeners, dissatisfied with the non-fat vanilla being dispensed on the radio and in the record stores - Backstreet Boys, anyone? But once they discover peer-to-peer file sharing and CD burners, there's no holding them back. The record companies try their strong-arm tactics and lose. They can't cope with the guerrilla savvy of kids with computers and a bottomless thirst for music.
Kot also writes about how established artists like Prince, Radiohead and Wilco thrived in the digital age because they didn't sit around and whine like emo punks while musical civilization as we know it crumbled. He pays homage to acts that emerged during the turmoil and used it to their advantage.
The most fascinating part of the book is its retelling of how the big music companies committed capitalist suicide.
The executives couldn't get their analog heads around the digital future. If industry leaders had always followed their mistrust of technology, we'd still be listening to music on 78-r.p.m. shellac, or maybe even wax cylinders.
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