Product Description

A decade ago the vast majority of mainstream music was funneled through a handful of media conglomerates. Now, more people are listening to more music from a greater variety of sources than at any time in history. And big corporations such as Viacom, Clear Channel, and Sony are no longer the sole gatekeepers and distributors, their monopoly busted by a revolution -- an uprising led by bands and fans networking on the Internet. Ripped tells the story of how the laptop generation created a new grassroots music industry, with the fans and bands rather than the corporations in charge. In this new world, bands aren't just musicmakers but self-contained multimedia businesses; and fans aren't just consumers but distributors and even collaborators.

As the Web popularized bands and albums that previously would have been relegated to obscurity, innovative artists -- from Prince to Death Cab for Cutie -- started coming up with, and stumbling into, alternative ways of getting their music out to fans. Live music took on an even more significant role. TV shows and commercials emerged as great places to hear new tunes. Sample-based composition and mash-ups leapfrogged ahead of the industry's, and the law's, ability to keep up with them. Then, in 2007, Radiohead released an album exclusively on the Internet and allowed customers to name their own price, including $0.00. Radiohead's "it's up to you" marketing coup seized on a concept the old music industry had forgotten: the customer is always right.

National radio host and critically acclaimed music journalist Greg Kot masterfully chronicles this story of how we went from $17.99 to $0.00 in less than a decade. It's a fascinating tale of backward thinking, forward thinking, and the power of music.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15487 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416547273
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
In what has become a growing field, Kot's account of the music industry's massive struggles and glimmers of success in the digital age stands out for its sturdily constructed prose and command of up-to-date facts. The narrative moves chronologically from the late 1990s to the late 2000s, pivoting deftly from such subjects as the havoc deregulation wreaked on mainstream radio, the recording industry's attempted shock and awe–style crackdown on downloading and the recent pay-what-you-want online selling model pioneered by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. One of Kot's great strengths is that he is an able and passionate chronicler of the independent labels, musicians and critics whose rise in influence has been the definite upside of the old power structure's collapse. Kot gives us the first essential, critical account of the ever-expanding reach of the indie music Web site Pitchfork Media, a well informed analysis of the history and recent hyperdevelopment of sample-based music and self-contained portraits of new model artists such as Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes. The book thankfully avoids the technology and industry gossip possibilities inherent in the subject and instead focuses on the sometimes unexpectedly wonderful mutations in the way that musicians and listeners think about popular music. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Kot, venerable pop-music reviewer for the Chicago Tribune and music blogger extraordinaire, brings readers up-to-date on how the “wired generation” changed the style of modern pop (as every generation does) and the way in which the stuff gets to fans. Along the way, he describes the near-demise of the big record labels (the chapter “Consolidated to Death” is particularly pithy), the online music downloading court skirmishes with consumers and bands alike (with special attention paid to Metallica’s contretemps with Napster), the waning influence of MTV, and bands bypassing corporate players to take their music straight to the audience via the Web. Notably, Radiohead and Metallica gave Kot access, and the results constitute the best summary of the huge recent changes in the business of pop to date. It’s too bad, perhaps, that the current state of the music biz makes it incumbent on a talented critic like Kot to consider the business side of the music more deeply than the artistic side of it, but that’s the situation, and Kot is up to explaining it. --Mike Tribby

Review
"Indispensable for anyone who wants to understand popular music in the twenty-first century." -- Kirkus Reviews

Customer Reviews

Good background/analysis of the last 10 years of the music business
Greg Kot is a good rock writer/reviewer, Chicago Tribune columnist, and is frequently published in Rolling Stone (as national magazines go), among other publications. His new book, "Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music", provides a good recap of the last ten years or so of the music industry, as concerns developments on the digital front. I found the book of particular interest, as I have worked in the music business in one capacity or another for almost 15 years and remember pretty much all of what's contained in the book. If you are not aware of, and want to learn about the music industry's recent digital developments, then this book is a very good way to get up to speed.

The chapters focus on key events/artists that were pivotal in the changing music business model over the last decade. Key events such as the rise of Napster (and the music industry's attempts to contain and destroy it, rather than embrace the technology and monetize it), Metallica's fight against Napster, the departure of established acts (Madonna, Radiohead, McCartney, Prince, NIN, et al.) from the major label system in favor of non-traditional music companies/doing it themselves, newer artists availing themselves of technology to reach their fans and `do it on their own' (such as Ani DiFranco, Bright Eyes, and others), the rise/domination of the Ipod and ITunes, and chapter bumpers of various interviewees' mindsets and insights into how they acquire music (eg. Some younger people either don't realize that they are violating a copyright/impacting someone's livelihood, with illegal downloading, or simply don't care). Some chapters are more interesting than others (which might depend on how familiar you are with the artists that Kot covers), though the book doesn't ever get bogged down in boring narrative, and it explains more-recent industry-specific concepts in easy to understand terms for the layman (though a prior understanding, on the reader's part, of the basics of the music industry's workings helps, but is not required).

Kot hits pretty much all the key events that we've seen in the last ten years or so, that have impacted the music industry business model. I'm not convinced there are any answers in this book as to where we're going to be in ten years, which is not necessarily Kot's fault (as he's fairly objective in reporting the circumstances), as the `new model' of the music business is still being created and the kinks of the `new order' are still being worked out. But what's going to happen in the next ten years or so, if older acts come off the road for good, and new acts don't develop? We'll likely hear endless complaints about how new music sucks and no major artists are developing (which is kinda what we're hearing now and have been for a while). I'd like to have seen more speculation on where we're headed. I've also spent a long time waiting for some writer, somewhere, to point out the disingenuous stance of a band like 2008's-independent-Radiohead, for example, that rails against major labels and gives little credit for the help they received along the way, while the 1993-baby-band version of Radiohead was probably only too happy to have a record deal, able to pursue their dream with a label supporting them at the beginning with marketing efforts, so that they could eventually get to the level they're at today (and be in a position to dictate their own future, as well as bad-mouth the system). That's more or less on p. 237, finally, though that point probably needed to be made a bit sooner in the book because it seems to be a key factor present in basically ALL superstar-level career arcs, particularly as they depart labels for DIY deals. Take the labels' money when young and hungry, get into `the machine', attain huge success, get jaded, then bad-mouth the company as having somehow hindered you every step of the way. My take away from what I read was that most of the acts who were nurtured and given two or three albums to develop and became long-term successes, today would probably be done if their first album didn't hit, and looking at barista careers. Unfortunately, the economics of the business might very well not allow for 3 chances these days. Are labels still necessary? Yes, probably, if an artist wants to reach a massive audience, because that's what major labels are geared toward, and because it's hard to get traction (not to mention visibility on traditional outlets, like late-nite shows) when EVERY band out there trying to do it on their own has a myspace page, sans higher-level marketing know-how and connections. It's a double-edged sword: the technology that empowers any/every band to promote itself and possibly actually earn a living doing what they love, is the same technology that overwhelms and inundates users with almost TOO MUCH unfiltered information. Was the industry wrong in not embracing Napster and nipping the problem in the bud, and monetizing it? Probably, but we're way past that at this point, as Kot points out (and I agree with). Now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, and the economics of the business have been turned upside down, who's going to make that marketing-intensive investment, if labels aren't around? It's hard to imagine that a band, doing it on their own via a website and without a label's muscle, will be able to reach the equivalent of being a 5-million seller, but that's probably NOT the object anymore, if they're netting more per download and able to sustain a touring career and fanbase, and make a living. The model is definitely changing, toward empowering the artist, as Kot illustrates effectively over and over in the book.

Solid, journalistic account of music's digital revolution
Greg Kot's "Ripped" provides a good overview on how digital technologies have transformed the music industry during the past decade. By the end of the 1990s, the domination of four major conglomorations and the exorbitant fees charged by independent promoters and radio stations(themselves consolidating under Clear Channel's banner) had driven most independent music to the margins. For Kot, the emblem of this overweening corporate control is the overpriced CD - $18.99 in 1999 dollars. With the advent of the internet, however, artists and increasingly consumers began taking back control over the production, distribution and consumption of music.

Kot rehearses many familiar features of the changing landscape: the short-sightness rearguard reaction by the record industry that, by suing people for downloading music, alienated their customer base; the rise in digital music artists whose sampling and 'mash-ups' have challenged the limits of copyright law; and how artists like Prince, Radiohead, and even Paul McCartney have pursued other outlets to reach customers rather than their the rapidly-crumbling appartus of the industry leaders. A music critic for the Chicago Tribune, Kot's book profits from his interactions with insiders in both the official and underground music scenes. He includes testimonies from a array of different sources and provides a real sense of having his finger on the pulse. Moreover, although he clearly endorses the burgeoning democraticization of music that the internet has produced, he does recognize pitfalls as well. While internet fanzines like [...] have been instrumental calls attention to new bands, he argues that they can also over-hype them and burn out popular interest in them even before their first records are released.

Nonetheless, Kot sees the overall trends in a positive light, arguing that the internet actually revitalized American music, eliminating the corporate middlemen and bringing artists and consumers together as co-consumers and co-creators. If you know this history already, "Ripped" provides a great summary account; for a non-expert like me, the book was an excellent introduction.

Interesting take, not what I expected
When I first saw this book, I expected that it would primarily chronicle the business/technological changes that have occurred to music in the past decade, and secondarily apply that to real life scenarios. In practice, however, this book is filled with artist vignettes that then reflect the technological changes. "Ripped" spends more time looking at how artists have adapted to the new technological mold, rather than how the technological mold has applied to artists.

The beginning of the book starts out a bit more describing the business aspect of things -- the typical record company "middleman" and how going forward the industry is to blame for its nearsightedness that the Internet would bring. The text, which is divided into 20 chapters, then delves into the Napster-era and the RIAA sharing lawsuits and litigation. Beginning around the fifth chapter, Kot begins to directly quote the artists and their experiences. And this is where I think the book begins to take a turn for the worse and spends too much time on the little intricacies of being a successful music artist -- and not enough time talking about the technological and business changes that were occurring in the industry. While topics such as "zines" and "blogs" are touched upon, the chronicles on the artists seem to take an overarching tone, despite being well researched and presented in a conversational manner to the reader.

In the last three or four chapters, Kot finally delves into iTunes and similar services that have begun to change the industry. But he doesn't spend nearly enough time, in my opinion, on how and why this is actually working -- but rather delves into the experiences of just a few artists. It's clear by the end of the book that we aren't ready to rid of the label system yet. More or less I'd have to say the author doesn't provide any great conclusions except that music was (and probably still is) a "high priced specialty business" in which "no one saw a reason to change." I'd have to agree that many of the major record labels still haven't seen a reason to change.