MusicPiracy
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How a file format brought an industry to its knees
MP3. It's the format that revolutionized the way music's been consumed since the late '90s. When Karlheinz Brandenburg, a German acoustics engineer, discovered that an audio file could be compressed down to one-twelfth of its original size without distortion, he created the file-shrinking technology. Stephen Witt's debut book, How Music Got Free, traces all digital music piracy back to the invention of that format, which inadvertently made it possible for people to download and share music illegally. The book details the science and struggle behind the widely used audio technology. And his investigation uncovers the politics and the manipulative men who kept MP3 files from seeing the light of computer screens for years.
Recommended Reading: Designing a roller coaster that'll make you weep
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. How to Design a Roller Coaster That'll Make You Beg For Mercy by Jeff Wise Bloomberg Business When it comes to designing a roller coaster, there are any number of tools that can achieve that maximum thrill. At Carowinds, a theme park that borders North and South Carolina, the Fury 325 debuted this spring. The ride packs a 325-foot drop and top speeds of 95MPH. How does something like this come about? Bloomberg's Jeff Wise will take you for a ride to find out.
Former EMI boss says Limewire users were major iTunes customers
Douglas C. Merrill used to work for record label EMI, one of the biggest members of the RIAA. He was forced out just a year later, but now he's sharing information from inside the company. And some of that information points to an interesting conclusion about music pirates: they often end up being some of the music industry's best customers. Speaking at a conference in Sydney, Merrill said that a profile they'd conducted of users of the LimeWire music sharing service portrayed them as some of the biggest spenders on iTunes. "That's not theft, that's try-before-you-buy marketing and we weren't even paying for it," Merrill said at the show, "so it makes sense to sue them." That last part is sarcasm, we're pretty sure. Of course, most record companies saw illegal downloading as purchases that just didn't happen, and thus lost revenue. But this conclusion hints that "pirates" aren't taking away from music sales -- they're just download music to fill out their already big purchased collections. That's the kind of premise that the upcoming iTunes Match seems to be banking on, where users will be able to pay a subscription fee to verify any music downloaded outside of iTunes as official iTunes purchases. It would certainly end up being ironic if it turned out that the very same customers the RIAA attacked and sued back during those early days of filesharing were some of the same customers ringing in the digital music age that's now keeping record companies afloat. [via Boing Boing]
