How Music Got Free written by Stephen Witt is an exciting and thrilling book about how the digital music industry came about. Before reading this book I never thought about how itunes, spofity, pandora, and downloads came about i just figured it came about how everything else develops. I was born the year that music piracy became a thing, but even during my childhood my mom and I always bought CD’s. It wasn’t till I was in middle school that I began using an mp3 player and ipods. I feel like nobody really looks at downloading music “illegally” as a criminal conspiracy because it is seen as such a common thing in the world. Especially among those younger generations and students. One thing that surprised me most about the book was the fact that “the network” of people trading music and such weren’t caught for years. The explanation about universal and their sale is a perfect example of how listeners don’t necessarily care about the quality of music and production, they care about accessibility more than anything.  “Universal was selling one out of three albums in the United States, and one out of four in the world. But it wasn’t enough: even as the music industry’s number one supplier, Universal’s overall top-line revenues had gone down. The compact disc was going obsolete, and the revenue streams that Steve Jobs had promised him from iTunes were failing to materialize. Digital sales of music accounted for 1 percent of Universal’s revenues in 2005.” The last thing that I am going to touch on with this is the aspect of what this has done to musicians in the world. I think in a way the new digital era takes away money from musicians, but at the same time they make hundreds and thousands of dollars on music sales. It’s a really interesting point and concept to look at that I personally have never really given any thought to until reading this book.

Sarah White