Appetite For Self-Destruction: The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
Steve Knopper
Appetite For Self-Destruction: The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the music industry's wild 30-year ride through the digital age. Based on interviews with over 200 music industry sources-from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning-as well as assiduous research in legal documents, unpublished memoirs, Billboard reports, and so on, Steve Knopper, a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, offers a contemporary history of big music that is more comprehensive and entertaining than any other book out there. From the birth of the compact disk, through the explosion of CD sales in the 80s and 90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to ITunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the board rooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.
3.2 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Music, Stage & Screen |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
320 |
| RRP |
£10.99 |
| Date of Publication |
June 2009 |
| ISBN |
978-1847371362 |
| Publisher |
Simon & Schuster |
| |
Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the music industry's wild 30-year ride through the digital age. Based on interviews with over 200 music industry sources-from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning-as well as assiduous research in legal documents, unpublished memoirs, Billboard reports, and so on, Steve Knopper, a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, offers a contemporary history of big music that is more comprehensive and entertaining than any other book out there. From the birth of the compact disk, through the explosion of CD sales in the 80s and 90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to ITunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the board rooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.
Reviews
The Los Angeles Times
Erik Himmelsbach
“Knopper piles on examples of incompetence, making a convincing case that the industry's collapse is a drawn-out suicide... "Had the labels made a deal with Napster," Knopper notes, "they would have found several immediate advantages: a built-in user base of 26.4 million people as of February 2001 . . . ; an efficient way of communicating with customers; and the flexibility to set prices at a number of levels. The sad fact was employees at major labels had spent years and years downplaying the internet as a marketing tool."”
22/01/2009
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The Sunday Times
Robert Sandall
“[A] pacy account of corporate greed and myopia... Knopper does some impressive maths to show that, had a more equitable deal been struck offering legal downloads via Napster for $1 a track, the record industry could have benefited to the tune of $16 billion a year. What he doesn’t explain is just how unlikely this was in a business increasingly run by lawyers, or former lawyers, with a narrow fixation on control and ownership. ”
31/05/2009
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The New York Times
Dwight Garner
“He paints a devastating picture of the industry’s fumbling, corruption, greed and bad faith over the decades... It’s too bad his interesting arguments and observations are wedged into such an uningratiating book. The prose in “Appetite for Self-Destruction” is undercooked, packed with clichés and awkward descriptions... What’s more, Mr. Knopper apparently did not get access to many of the major players in this tale...”
06/01/2009
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