Kitty Empire talks to Stephen Witt about his eagerly awaited book charting the rise of the MP3 file, the online pirates who exploited it and the record industry that ignored its cultural impact until it was far too lateExtract: Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy How Music Got Free is in essence the gripping tale of three men: Karlheinz Brandenburg, the German scientist whose lab cobbled together the MP3; Doug Morris, the old-school record company executive who presided over the rap boom and began the fight-back against piracy; and Bennie Lydell “Dell” Glover, the North Carolina CD pressing plant worker, whose light fingers and computer skills singlehandedly led to a haemorrhage of A-list rock and hip-hop releases – Eminem, Kanye West, Queens of the Stone Age, Björk – being freely available on the internet two weeks before release.The three men never met, but Witt reveals how their lives overlapped and irrevocably changed those of anyone who listens to music. Brandenburg’s genius lay in shrinking sound files down so that they could easily be sent over the internet, back when most files were huge and modems still dialled up. Owing to the bitter internecine rivalries within acoustic engineering, no one recognised the scope of Brandenburg’s technology; the inferior MP2 kept winning industry accolades and commercial applications. Universal executive Morris presided over an industry rich from the obscene profits generated by CD sales, until the secretive... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-06-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
Once an anomaly in author contracts, morality clauses are becoming a standard tool for publishers looking to protect themselves against misbehaving authors. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-04-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Apple plans to integrate recently acquired magazine app Texture into Apple News and debut its own premium subscription offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is part of a broader push by the iPhone maker to generate more revenue from online content and services.The... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2018-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for music for his album “Damn,” providing perhaps the biggest surprise as the awards for journalism, arts and letters were announced Monday in New York. Lamar becomes the first hip-hop artist to win the Pulitzer’s music category, which... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Apple on Wednesday promoted a company veteran to oversee Apple Music and said the service had hit 48 million subscribers. Oliver Schusser is now vice president of Apple Music and international content. A 14-year Apple employee, Schusser previously led launches of Apple services like the iTunes... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2018-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Former Carlton Books m.d. Jim Greenhough has been retained by Danish publisher Flying V Books to launch a programme of music titles in 2019. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-03-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Blake Publishing has acquired snooker player Stephen Hendry's memoir, Me And The Table: My Autobiography. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-03-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Transworld's managing director Larry Finlay has paid tribute to "one of the world's greatest thinkers" following the death of Stephen Hawking, aged 76. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Stephen Hawking, el físico británico cuyo cuerpo estaba encadenado a una silla de ruedas por los estragos de una enfermedad neuromuscular degenerativa, pero con una mente que ilustró los límites del universo y más allá, murió el miércoles por la mañana en Cambridge, Inglaterra, confirmó... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Groundbreaking physicist Stephen Hawking, who died March 14, knocked God out of his universe in his books -- and Christian apologists put the creator right back in theirs. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The late physicist’s editor, Peter Guzzardi, recalls his first meetings with Hawking and how his book became a bestsellerStephen Hawking dies aged 76I first encountered Stephen Hawking on the cover of the New York Times magazine. Inside, its pages told a story we all know today, but at the time... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook Inc. has signed a licensing agreement with Warner Music that covers the music company’s recorded music and music publishing catalogs for use in social media such as videos and messages. The deal paves the way for social media users to create, upload and share videos with licensed... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2018-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook on Friday announced a pair of deals that gets the social networking giant deeper into a pair of popular consumer pursuits — music and baseball. On the music front, Facebook is following up earlier deals it struck with Universal Music Group and Sony/ATV Music Publishing by lining up a... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2018-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Faber & Faber has three books on the shortlist for this year’s £1,000 Penderyn Music Book Prize. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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British music magazine NME, which helped mold musical tastes for several generations, will stop publishing its weekly print edition. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2018-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Two years of growth were ended in 2017, with print sales dropping to an all-time low. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-02-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook followed up on the music-licensing deals it announced last month by reaching an agreement for its first "multi-territorial" music license with online licensing processing and licensing solutions provider ICE Services. The social network inked similar pacts with Global Music Rights,... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2018-02-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Today in kinda niche but nevertheless instructive Twitter dustups, Pamela Paul, the editor of the New York Times book review, weighed in on two of the most divisive topics known to the internet: the service industry and grammar. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2018-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'Governments need to be convinced that the scourge of piracy is a problem for them and for their countries’ evolving economies," IPA's José Borghino tells the Arab Publishers Association's conference in Tunisia. The post At the Tunis Conference: On Piracy and the Myth of ‘Free Content’ appeared... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2018-01-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Stephen King may be the Master of Horror, but one of his fans is dealing with horror of a new kind. A Bangor, Maine, bookstore owner lost several of King’s rare manuscripts and books after a burst pipe flooded his store's basement, the Bangor Daily News reports. Gerald Winters, the owner of... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-01-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Books from The Rolling Stones and "Godfather of Grime" Wiley will compete for the Penderyn Music Book Prize 2018. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#rolling stones