A new book aims at exposing exactly how the rise of digital music piracy began.
“How Music Got Free” written by Stephen Witt chronicles online piracy origins and traces the illegal maneuver back to one of the largest music leak rings ever.
Witt’s non-fiction narrative details the involvement of the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, factory worker Dell Glover who leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, and music executive Doug Morris.
“How Music Got Free” places emphasis on the illegal release of rap records, but ultimately the piracy practices Glover, Morris and others engaged in affected all genres and revolutionized an entire artform.
Witt plans to publish his first book, “How Music Got Free,” in June.
Check out an excerpt via The New Yorker below:
In January, 2003, Glover leaked 50 Cent’s official début, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” to Kali. It became the bestselling U.S. album of the year. He followed that up with albums from Jay Z, G Unit, Mary J. Blige, Big Tymers, and Ludacris, and then began the following year with Kanye West’s début, “The College Dropout.” After a scare, in which Glover worried that a release might be traced to him, the timing of leaks became more and more a point of focus. Glover’s leaks began to hit the Internet about two weeks before the CDs were due in stores, neither so early that the leak could be traced to the plant nor so late that RNS risked being bested by other pirates.
The group’s ascendancy came during a period of heightened scrutiny by law enforcement. In April, 2004, the F.B.I. and foreign law-enforcement agencies conducted coördinated raids in eleven countries, identifying more than a hundred pirates. The R.I.A.A.’s anti-piracy unit was staffed with investigators, who hung around the chat rooms of the Scene and learned its language. They tried to infiltrate the Scene, and tracked the leaked material and its dissemination throughout the Internet. Their research began to point them to one increasingly powerful crew, RNS, and they shared their findings with the F.B.I.
Music was free for thousands of years until it was made into a commodity like everything from seeds to cells. The only pirates are those who took what was there for all to share & put a title or price tag on it.
musicians were paid with food, immunity, housing, clothing, travel, wine, trinkets, don’t get it twisted by letting straight out theft pass as some old school tradition because you don’t understand the BARTER system
Lmao you act like people had the ability to sell music 1000’s of years ago. And like the other dude said these musicians put on shows and were given food and even quartered with the kings if they were good enough. Sheet music has been commercially published for around 600 years yet you act like music being sold is a recent thing. Stop trying to act high and mighty and anti consumer.
Slick Rick with eypatch was #1 hip-hop pirate…. aye!!!!!
Ah RNS. Nostalgia.