Sonic Boom: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music

by JohnAlderman (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $20.06

  Sonic Boom is a fascinating narrative of the controversy that's sending shock waves through the music industry. It reveals how even as the star-maker machinery of record companies remains in the hands of the old guard, innovators are finding ways to route around it. Part industry expos and part music history, Sonic Boom presents a candid and entertaining account of how digital compression technologies such as MP3 have brought out the best and worst in artists and consumers alike, and how the end result can be nothing less than a cultural and economic transformation. Peopled with a sensational cast of characters that includes rock stars, music moguls, teenagers, and Internet entrepreneurs, Sonic Boom exposes the recording industry's plight as a fascinating microcosm of the vast cultural, ethical, and legal issues that all industries face in the information age.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.22

  The first book to tell the inside story of the battle for control over the future of music and how technology is ripping up the traditional rules of business. As the internet grew throughout the 1990s, software was developed, such as Liquid Audio and MP3, that could deliver music anywhere and most importantly for free. Bands were reaching fans without record company support; entrepreneurs made money distributing digital music files without licensing agreements; the music industry executives complained of piracy and refused to embrace the Information Age. The story of the struggle to define the future of the music industry is a parable of how technology is completely changing the way we think and do business. Internet companies such as Napster, invented in 1999 by the nineteen-year-old Shawn Fanning, were rewriting the rules. Within two years, the music industry was on the attack, Napster was shut down by the courts and then bought by Bertelsmann. The on going battle highlights some of the most crucial questions facing all forms of commerce in the face of the internet: how does the internet change the way we pay for things? How far will traditional businesses go to protect their future? 'Sonic Boom' is immaculately researched and peopled by the musicians, executives, entrepreneurs and programmers behind one of the most vital questions concerning the Information Age: who owns intellectual content on the web?