Paramount’s desirable new music documentary series, How Music Got Free, is based on Stephen Witt’s e-book of the same name, which was almost not as revealing as it turned out to be. It shows how the music industry has moved from CD promotion to general promotion. public at high prices and with their highest incomes than ever on the verge of disappearing.
“I wanted to write an e-book about the history of MP3. That’s what I thought I was writing,” Witt shared in a recent verbal exchange about the beginning of this journey. “I went to Germany and interviewed the engineers who invented it. “, he added. They spent 10 years in this audio lab developing this complicated technology, and then it took over the world, but they weren’t talking about how it took over the world in particular. “
Those who created MP3s didn’t need to look at how the world shares and feeds on music, in part because the invention nearly brought about the downfall of the entire industry. It wasn’t the executives of the major record labels who pushed the product to the public, or even the artists. So who made MP3 a global phenomenon?”Teenagers took it from the server and started using it to hack files,” Witt confirmed, and that’s the basis of How Music Got Free.
The docuseries takes a closer look at how the web replaced the music industry for good, immediately allowing anyone to download whatever they wanted for free. It didn’t take long for a career to begin between pirate groups, all of whom were looking to be the first to share a superstar’s latest album or single. It required the intervention of someone in the industry, and this is where the series becomes impactful.
How Music Got Free is not a series of ads and it is not boring. It shows the enormous aspect of piracy and demonstrates how even one man can disrupt an entire industry, if the right opportunity arises.
I spoke with manufacturer Witt and director Alexandria Stapleton about how music has become free, their concern even about piracy, and why they feel this story hasn’t been told sooner, even though this crime has been affecting global trade for decades.
Hugh McIntyre: I went into this exhibition thinking I knew the story, but there are a lot of things I hadn’t realized. Tell me what a series is like.
Alexandria Stapleton: Well, it clearly starts with Stephen’s book and then Spring Hill. I was working with Spring Hill at the time. I did one of the first documentary series they did, Shut Up And Dribble, and they kept saying they were excited because they were more of a small company than they are now, and yet they had just bought Stephen’s book. They were very emocionados. al about it. One of the executives, Phil Byron, said, “It’s an explosive, crazy story that nobody understands. “
They told me about it and I won a copy of the ebook. I read a lot of books to prepare for a presentation or a documentary, but this is the only book that, as I read it, I look for how it could come together as a series.
McIntyre: Wow.
Stapleton: This just came off the page. Stephen and I met in the user and we got along well. Then the adventure of throwing in many positions began. When we introduced this, it was pre-COVID, and I think it was hard for others. People realize how it can be filmed, because a lot of it is on the computer. It was a challenge to overcome, but we finally found our permanent home with MTV Studios and Paramount. I can’t think of a better role for this, as one of the most interesting things about this series is the access to the MTV archive library that we were able to include.
McIntyre: Stephen, obviously, it started with you, but can you tell us what led you to this story and that it’s not just an article, but a whole book?
Stephen Witt: Actually, it was done completely backwards. He wanted to write an e-book about the history of MP3. That’s what I thought I was writing. I went to Germany and interviewed the engineers who invented it. That’s what I thought the story was about when I started it. I had an e-book in mind.
But as I interviewed them, I discovered that there was a hole in their story that they just didn’t talk about. They spent 10 years in this audio lab to create this fancy generation, and then it took over the world, but they weren’t talking about how it took over the world in particular because they didn’t have the buy-in. industry and had no members. giant engineering companies. I was wondering how exactly this generational change occurred.
I started looking into it and discovered this treasure trove of old Internet documents that showed that these teenagers were given the server and started hacking files.
Now the guys [waiters] suffered from selective amnesia when they talked about that period. They didn’t need anyone to know what happened. But because I started to get interested in pirates, I thought, “Oh my God, this is a story. ” So I completely reworked the book and completely reworked my own plot to be all about that. In fact, it was the first thing I wrote. I did it the other way around. Like I said, first I wrote a book and then I became a magazine journalist.
They then put me in touch with Spring Hill and Alex. And, as Alex said, it was a little difficult to conceptualize. How can you turn that into a documentary when you have to show things on television? Alex did a fantastic job, as did the graphics team, but it was the interviews with the pirates that we did: they did the homework of the documentary.
McIntyre: How did you get to Spring Hill and how did this verbal exchange begin?
Witt: He recovered a little bit, but a manufacturer named Phil Byron. Phil grew fond of it, enjoyed it, and put a very, very hard effort into the story. It’s almost legendarily difficult to pull off. Phil did a very clever job.
McIntyre: Wow. Good job, Phil. This is your first book and then, of course, you went on to write and do journalism. How do you feel about hearing about this project and having those conversations about your first book?Were you nervous about making a movie out of it?
Witt: I had no idea what I was doing, so I wasn’t nervous. I thought, okay, I’m talking to a Hollywood manufacturer. I had no experience. I’ve never done that before. That had never been my intention. It was quite surprising. It was definitely a little out of place at first, but the navigation turned out to be relatively simple and painless.
McIntyre: Alex, is there anything in particular that made you think: I have to do this?
Stapleton: I felt like I was living my adolescence in early adulthood on Hitale, in addition to the pirates and artists we were able to relate to. To me, the real center of the story is Shelby, Del, and the factory workers. This whole world that Del built on a computer, but also when he did it in real life [in real life]. That sealed the deal for me.
I’m a black Southerner and I think that’s really important. I’m in this new phase of my career, I would say, where I’m actually looking to extract everything imaginable from stories that other people think they understand, but it’s not like that. The B-side is about exploring more Southern stories, more Black stories, because I feel like we’re occasionally two-dimensional as Southerners, but on a broader level.
I feel like other people never explore the richness and diversity. . . and innovation that the Global South has created in fashionable times. Del’s tale is definitely an underdog tale. As a man born in this city with few resources, you can’t help wondering if he was a white man and if he were born in Seattle, the Bay Area, New York or Los Angeles, how would life be different than he?
The global continues to evolve rapidly with technological innovation and the intersection of art and technology. I think it’s important to understand that innovators can be found in some of the most unlikely places. It was in the back of my mind.
The amazing thing is that it took a while to come out, but I think it’s the best time for other people to reflect on that moment. But then, how do we apply that era to what is happening today?
Witt: yes, that’s funny. When I started writing this, something quite new was really happening. Over time, it’s become a piece of general nostalgia, but it really came to light at the right time. I think people, especially those of the younger generation who didn’t know what Napster was, who didn’t revel in it, will literally be drawn and surprised by this material.
McIntyre: And polite. This could possibly be the first time they understand why the music industry is the way they’re used to.
Stapleton: Yeah.
Witt: Absolutely, yes.
McIntyre: Alex, it’s appealing to hear what percentages of this attitude toward Del and the other Shelby people because as I look at it, I’m thinking, “Are those other people doing the right thing for them and their families?Are they bad?” Guys? Are they both?Sometimes you even felt like maybe you were on their side, based on some of the quotes left there. What do you think of those people, the pirates and the other people in Shelby?
Stapleton: Well, the other Shelthrough people, I’m on your side all day.
They were absolutely underpaid. They literally won nothing. It’s important for people to understand that the industry charges $20 for a CD, and it costs about 20 cents to make. That’s a huge profit margin. And to have a factory that pays a little enough for other people to put food on the table, I think there’s nothing wrong with that. I felt that when it came time for factory staff to take things off the line, they would look for them so they could protect themselves. Yes, technically it opposes the law, but the challenge was much greater than that. It was crazy because the record industry was printing money, as if we were lending a hand.
I also think that from a hacker’s perspective, the 2000s were a very decadent decade for American pop culture. The super decadent music videos all showed the money, the fancy cars, the champagne bottles, all creating this symbol to make other people in Shelby and around the country think, “Oh, that’s what happens when you get a hit record or song. “That’s how they live. This is also the era of The Apprentice and Donald Trump and money, money, money, I mean, it’s not that we’re absolutely out of this, but it’s definitely a very 2000s thing.
I know for a fact that those pirates. . . They were very young, teenagers in their early twenties, and I don’t really think they understood that what they were doing was so detrimental to the company. They were completely indiferentes. de the music industry. What they didn’t realize was that at a time when the music industry was at its lowest point, the façade of what was being broadcast there wasn’t real. In the music business, in the corporate environment of the music business, when they started to go bankrupt, a lot of other people who were just assistants, copywriters in the structures industry, junior executives, receptionists, assistants, and all kinds of people in the ecosystem lost their jobs.
We now live in a culture and world where we have witnessed, from 2008 onwards, the collapse of some corporations and the effect this has had on people.
I think the general American public may perceive that a CEO is different from the average employee of a company. I think we’re smarter as a network to perceive that. But at that moment I thought, “Oh, all those other people have cash and they all live in New York and Los Angeles. »
Witt: It’s amazing to think about what they were doing, which was essentially filling the technological gap that the recording industry was refusing to fill, right? The recording industry did not expand the generation that would succeed the compact disc because it was simply too successful for them. Instead, an organization of random teenagers built the next generation by themselves, and yes, they did a lot of damage. But I don’t think the teenagers were necessarily looking to harm anyone.
McIntyre: No.
Witt: They weren’t malicious. They were just fascinated by how those things worked, and of course they were also absolutely fascinated by the fame of the musicians themselves.
McIntyre: Was it difficult to get the other people from Shelby and those pirates to come down, show their faces and names and communicate what they did?
Witt: When I approached them, many of them wanted to talk. They were traumatized by their experience with the FBI, I would say, and they wanted this story to come out. I was surprised by their receptiveness. . Now, some didn’t need to communicate at all. Others would say, “I never need to communicate about that time in my life. ” But this is good. Enough of them.
The FBI had prosecuted over a hundred other people, so there was enough to communicate about. Beyond that, Del was very open from the beginning. It was actually easy. I think he knew that something really normal had happened to him, that it had had an impact on the world. I think he wanted other people to know that, and that was his motivation.
McIntyre: I was also surprised to see someone like Eminem sit down and talk about it. It affected him a lot, but he’s in the same movie as the other people who hurt him and, in a way, protect what they did. How was this verbal exchange?
Stapleton: For Eminem and all the artists who participated, Timbaland 50, even Rhymefest, is bittersweet. They survived the storm. The careers of these artists did not stop due to piracy. While for many other artists, it was like a failure in the release.
People fell into an abyss because the music industry was in decline, but for them they survived. I think they spent more than a decade literally angry because they didn’t perceive who the culprit really was. I think they thought the intention was much more nefarious. I think the biggest thing they didn’t realize was that the people, the hackers and all the kids who were on peer-to-peer sites and sharing the leaked music, we were all fans. All we were looking for was to listen to it and enjoy it, to be on the network and to be able to share it with your friends or teenage friends. in his twenties.
As Stephen said, it’s not a bad intention. I think through the e-book and then through the conversations and the interviews, they can humanize Del and the pirates and begin to understand, “Oh, there’s a release error on our part. “
There was a failure with the IRAA and with the other people it was assigned to, the labels, the big corporations that ran everything, they were the eight of them. They did not heed the warnings. They weren’t hunting for the red flags. It was a bit of pride, and the artists ended up suffering too.
When this happened, Metallica vs. Napster was the biggest debate, right?It was like the OJ Simpson trial, and everyone had an opinion about it if you were young and a music lover. I feel that this debate was very two-dimensional. And that’s unfortunate because on the artist’s side, the concentrate just became: well, you have a lot of money, but it was so much more than that. It wasn’t Metallica who was only talking about Metallica. It was Metallica who was also looking to protect her tribe from other musicians.
As a filmmaker, if the first cut of my film, shared only with my editors and producers and very private, were to leak on the internet, I would die. It would mortify me, because it is an incomplete product. When you create something, you need it to [show that] you’re smart in what you do, you’re passionate about what you do, you need it to be the most productive product imaginable to offer your fans. It’s like this more productive typhoon from all those other angles. And it depends on where you are in the story to understand what your opinion is about it.
Thanks to the way Stephen wrote the book, it helped me to be able to edit this film. You have the possibility to sit in each chair and perceive what everyone was thinking and feeling.
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