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Read a new excerpt from Steve Knopper's landmark 'Appetite for Self-Destruction' about the industry's embrace of streaming music.
Knopper found that the innovation-averse major labels repeatedly took the wrong approach to digital formats. Instead of seeing a potential ally in Napster, a digital distribution platform with a millions-strong user base, the labels shut it down. Appetite for Self-Destruction came out just as the streaming services were starting to pick up steam — Spotify was beginning to gain traction in Europe — but long before the current streaming-happy age with Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and more competing for subscribers.
In a reissue of his book, out this week, Knopper adds a new chapter focused on the streaming revolution. As a result, the major labels cut a deal with Spotify, enabling the streaming service to launch in Europe in Within Universal Music, Wells had a reputation for recklessness. Years earlier, as a young U. One day, after listening to the usual talks about market share and new-release strategies, Wells stood up to make a presentation of his own.
The subject he chose was Napster, at that point five months old and not yet the disruption machine that would make the cover of Time. He projected its search box onto a screen and asked the execs in the room to suggest a song title. Richard Griffiths, later a manager who would turn One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer into superstars, came up with one by The Surfers, a band so obscure he was sure nobody would ever find it.
Instead, they saw piracy, chaos and doom, perhaps even a glimmer of urgent career rethinking. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources -- from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. From the birth of the compact disc, 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 boardrooms, 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.
With unforgettable portraits of the music world's mighty and formerly mighty; detailed accounts of both brilliant and stupid ideas brought to fruition or left on the cutting-room floor; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and several previously unreported stories, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining read.
It offers a broad perspective on the current state of Big Music, how it got into these dire straits, and where it's going from here -- and a cautionary tale for the digital age. Reviews Review Policy. Published on. Flowing text, Original pages. Best For. Web, Tablet, Phone, eReader. Content Protection. Learn More. Flag as inappropriate. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
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This book will explore the history of Decca and specifically the Studios, where thousands of records were made between and Dick Jordan and Geoff Williams, who ran the club, share their memories here. Containing more than fifty photographs, many of which have never before appeared in print, it will delight music lovers everywhere.
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Private video lessons from Avalon's Workshop are also included. Groundbreaking charts and graphs show industry consolidation, who owns what, and where the future of the music business is headed.
Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays. Roger Sessions. Over the past fifty years Roger Sessions has developed, in articles, lectures, and addresses, various themes that reflect the stages of his own musical and intellectual growth. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology.
Big Music has been asleep at the wheel ever since Napster revolutionized the way music was distributed in the s. Now, because powerful people like Doug Morris and Tommy Mottola failed to recognize the incredible potential of file-sharing technology, the labels are in danger of becoming completely obsolete. Knopper, who has been writing about the industry for more than ten years, has unparalleled access to those intimately involved in the music world's highs and lows. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources -- from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr.
From the birth of the compact disc, 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 boardrooms, 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.
With unforgettable portraits of the music world's mighty and formerly mighty; detailed accounts of both brilliant and stupid ideas brought to fruition or left on the cutting-room floor; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and several previously unreported stories, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining read. It offers a broad perspective on the current state of Big Music, how it got into these dire straits, and where it's going from here -- and a cautionary tale for the digital age.
He lives in Denver with his wife, Melissa, and daughter Rose. A wide-angled, morally complicated view of the current state of the music business He paints a devastating picture of the industry's fumbling, corruption, greed and bad faith over the decades. Though the labels persevered, they finally lost control of their product when they chose to ignore the possibilities of the Internet Knopper piles on examples of incompetence, making a convincing case that the industry's collapse is a drawn-out suicide.