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Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age Hardcover – January 6, 2009
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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 1990s. 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. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning—Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. 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.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFree Press
- Publication dateJanuary 6, 2009
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.25 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101416552154
- ISBN-13978-1416552154
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"Knopper, a Rolling Stone music business writer, thoughtfully reports on the record racket's slow, painful march into financial ruin and irrelevance, starting with the near-catastrophic sales slump that began in 1979 after the demise of disco. 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." -- Los Angeles Times
"[Knopper has a] nose for the story's human element.... The best parts of the book, such as Knopper's analysis of the late-'90s teen-pop bubble (and how it ultimately burst), move with the style and drama of a great legal thriller -- think Michael Clayton with headphones....This is gripping stuff. Crank it up." -- Time Out New York
"The music industry is toast, my friends. And congrats to Rolling Stone vet Steve Knopper, whose fantastic new book Appetite for Self-Destruction explains why" -- The Village Voice
"...Laced with anecdote, buttressed by detailed accounts of the most flagrant record-industry transgressions, Appetite (its title nicked from that of the Guns N' Roses debut disc) is an enthralling read, equal parts anger and regret. Knopper's writing is sharp, his approach sharper..." -- The Boston Globe
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Product details
- Publisher : Free Press; 1st edition (January 6, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1416552154
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416552154
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #313,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #92 in Music Business (Books)
- #114 in Music Recording & Sound (Books)
- #602 in Music History & Criticism (Books)
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About the author
Steve Knopper is a Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of "MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson" (Scribner, 2015) and "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age" (Simon & Schuster, 2009). He is a Denver, Colorado-based music journalist who has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Traveler, Details, Wired and many other publications.
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I grew up going to record stores, then chain stores, then saw the advent of the CD when I started college. I lived through the CD boom and read about big-name acts signing new contracts worth untold millions of dollars primarily because their back catalogs were selling so well when the world was upgrading their record collections from vinyl to CD. I watched in horror as the "boy bands" seemed to take over. I again watched in horror as the labels pushed only the best-selling artists and dumped the rest from their rosters. I moaned in disbelief when I learned that WalMart was the biggest brick-and-mortar retailer of recorded music, and that was sad and unfortunate because their selection was so narrow. I nearly cried as the rock radio stations I listened to became far more repetitive and far less interesting. I was initially horrified by Napster and sided with Metallica -- file swapping was theft, plain and simple. But the labels' litigious response to it was no less outrageous. Understandable on some level, but outrageous nonetheless. When digital music became the norm, the powers-that-be did everything they could to stem the tide, and they did it in such a way to sour the record-buying experience.
Perhaps worst of all, though, is that the "album" has all but died. It's all about the hit single. There is almost no such thing as artist development anymore. Remember a few decades ago when artist would put out a record every calendar year and tour behind it every calendar year? Each year you could count on seeing your favorite band (Van Halen, Journey, KISS, Rush, The Police, maybe even The Who) tour all over the U.S., even hitting the secondary markets. Nowadays many big-name artists wait up to 3 or 4 years between releases. MTV and the labels milking every last drop from every last album changed all that.
Basically, I lived through every milestone event Steve Knopper details in this book. I stood on the sidewalk and watched that entire fiasco parade pass by. This book reads like an "E! True Hollywood Story" account of the demise of the record industry. Part of the fun of browsing through a huge record store's bins was getting to discover and listen to new music. Not any more. There's a huge difference between trying out a new record at the listening station and hearing a 30-second snippet on iTunes or Amazon. There's very little of the feeling of ownership anymore, at least with digital download. No more opening up the record or CD to peruse the insert booklet, read the liner notes, read the lyrics, look at the artwork and photos, check the credits to see what guest artist or studio musicians may have played on it or co-written a tune or two.
But in today's world that may not be important to everyone. It's hard to believe, but there is an entire generation of kids out there buying music online who have NEVER set foot in a record store EVER. Boggles the mind. I'm getting old, but I'm not THAT old.
Many people my age saw most of these events as they happened. The great thing about Knopper's book is that we now have names to put with those events. We know the "what", and thanks to Knopper's research we also know the "who", "why", and "how".
As with many other culture-shifting events and history-making events, the change in the tide isn't always an inevitable force of nature. Often it is the end result of the actions (or lack of action) of a relatively few people of influence, the events affected by their individual personalities, ambitions, prejudices, greediness, or what-have-you. You might even say that the whole reason the record industry playing field was moved in the first place was because of the rise of the personal computer, and for that we have various players like Gates, Jobs, Woz, folks at the Palo Alto Research Center at Xerox, IBM, etc. One might say the music business changed so dramatically because the personal computer industry simply came into existence. Had the latter never developed (or developed differently), the former may not have changed the same way.
I guess a better introduction for Knopper's book could have been the book "Accidental Empires" or the PBS documentary "Triumph of the Nerds". Everything that happens is a result of many seemingly unrelated things that happened previously. Everything is connected.
"Appetite For Self-Destruction" is a fascinating book. Highly recommended.
But - as a history of a cultural shift, this holds up really well and is pretty interesting reading. Author Steve Knopper holds to the best journalists strategy - "a fact in every sentence." Literally, every sentence conveys a specific piece of information that builds the narrative. No fluff, all fact. He used a good mix of primary sources and contemporary interviews.
By now we already know the end to this story - it wasn't Napster that destroyed the music industry as much as the natural evolution of technology. I appreciated how Knopper mentioned how the iPod allowed users to listen to pirated music, while the music labels were in bed with Apple. So Apple was the big winner in all of this - they made money from all sides. I think this is often missed - Apple could have prevented piracy (or at least made it more difficult) but they facilitated it by making the iPod usable for pirated music - but not usable with songs bought from other places than iTunes! Truly devious.
This book captures this era. As a history of a pivotal, revolutionary time, it's definitely an interesting read. If you remember the 2002 dot-com, you'll recall how we all mocked all the silly web companies with their big ad campaigns and silly valuations - but for hubris, nobody touched the music industry.
Many people don't know that heads of major labels initially resisted the CD format. Musicians and music fans alike often don't realize how the CD's inception into the American marketplace attracted Wall Street, rewarded big-spending record execs, and ultimately facilitated a business model that made those big spenders resistant to the digital age. It's also not exactly common knowledge that the CD's development began in the early 1960's, or that the early stages of MP3's were actually attempts during the late 70's to transmit data through telephone lines.
The common thread of all these factors is that the music business and music consumption patterns do not move in a vacuum. Consumer behavior, whether or not consumers actually pay, has been hugely driven by new technological developments that were previously (and wrongly) perceived as being insignificant. AFSD depicts the ramifications of this myopic vision, most notably the industry's failure to capitalize on Napster's initial popularity and the eventual surrender to iTunes. You might be shocked at some of the business deals that went down in flames before Steve Jobs infiltrated his Mac-based world into the music business.
Steve Knopper concludes AFSD in a rather open-ended manner, which is another major criticism of this book. Of course, it would be awesome if Knopper could gaze into his crystal ball and tell us exactly where the record industry will be in 2020. Falling short on psychic powers, nonetheless, AFSD insightfully summarizes where we've been, adding new perspective on where the industry is now and potentially where it will go in the near future.
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It just made me hate illegal downloads.
Of course labels are no saints and everyone in the business played their part in turning the industry into what it is today. As long as everyone's thoughts is on protecting their own assets, it will be hard to reach a safe place.
Having said that, it's worth noting that the industry suffered too in the past with shifting behaviours to radio, to LPs and, later on, to CDs. Different scales; today's music and tech businesses have a lot more players, even if small ones which tend to be bought by the big sharks, and are a lot more intertwined, but there is always a way around. The problem is taking down that first barrier of the "run for your lives" attitude and substitute it for a slight-but-not-completely "all for one and one for all". After all, this is still business and business thrives in competition and needs it for the innovation and development's sake.
Digital is the new CD, which was the new 33 1/3rpm, which was the new radio and so on.