Paramount+ Documentary: an Origin Story For Music Piracy - and Its Human Side

Re-visiting the Napster era, Stephen Witt's book How Music Got Free has been adapted into a two-part documentary on Paramount+. But the documentary's director believes "The real innovative minds here were a bunch of rogue teenagers and a guy working a blue-collar factory job in the tiny town of Shelby, North Carolina," according to this article in the Guardian:By day, [Glover] worked at Universal Music's CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina, from which he smuggled out hot albums by stars like Mary J Blige and 50 Cent before they were even released. For the documentary, Glover spoke openly, and largely without regret, as did others who worked at that plant who did their own share of stealing. Part of their incentive was class revenge: while they were paid piddling wages by the hour, the industry used the products they manufactured to mint millions. To maximize profits on his end, Glover set up a subscription service to let those in his circle know what CDs and movies were coming. "He was doing what Netflix would later do," Stapleton said... In the meantime, the record companies and their lobbying arm, the RIAA, focused their wrath on the most public face of file-sharing: Napster. In truth, all Fanning's company did was make more accessible the work the pirates innovated and first distributed... For its part, the music industry reacted in the worst way possible, PR-wise. They sued the kids who made up their strongest fanbase. "One of the key lessons we learned from this era is that you can't sue your way out of a situation like this," Witt said. "You have to build a new technology that supersedes what the pirates did." Eventually, that's what happened, though the first attempts in that direction made things worse than ever for the labels and stars. When Apple first created the iPod in 2001, there wasn't yet an Apple store where listeners could purchase music legally. "It was just a place to put your stolen MP3s," said Witt. Labels couldn't sue Apple because of a ruling dictating that the manufacturer of a device couldn't be held responsible for piracy enacted by its users. While Steve Jobs later modified his approach, creating a way for fans to buy individual songs for the iPod, "that did more damage to the industry than anything", Witt said. "Whereas, before they could sell a $15 CD to fans who really just wanted one song, now those fans could get that song for just a dollar...." Eventually, the collective efforts of the streaming companies returned the music industry to massive profitability, though often at the expense of its artists, who often receive a meager slice of the proceeds.... Things ended less favorably for the pirates, some of whom now have criminal records. Likewise, Glover served a short prison sentence though, today, he is chief maintenance technician at the Ryder Truck manufacturing plant in his home town. A Forbes senior contributor (and director Alexandria Stapleton) believe that for the younger generation it may be "their first introduction to why the music industry is the way that they're used to." And Stapleton says their sympathies are with those factory workers.Stapleton: They were completely underpaid. They were making literally nothing. It's important for people to understand that while the industry was charging $20 for a CD, it cost like 20 cents to make. That's a big profit margin. And to have a factory that was paying barely enough for people to put food on the table, I think there's something wrong with that... Witt: It's amazing to think about what they were really doing, which was essentially filling the technological vacuum that the record industry was refusing to fill, right? The record industry was not building out the successor technology to the compact disc because the compact disc was just too profitable for them. Instead, a bunch of random teenagers built the next generation of technology for them, and yeah, it caused a lot of damage. But I don't think that teenagers were necessarily trying to hurt anyone... They weren't malicious. They just were fascinated by how this stuff worked. And of course, they were also completely entranced by the celebrity of the musicians themselves. In the interview Witt adds that a lot of those teenagers "were really kind of traumatized by their experience with the FBI I would say, and they wanted to get that story out there." The documentary was produced by LeBron James and Eminem, "who rode the tail end of the CD boom to stratospheric heights," remembers a Fast Company opinion columnist. (And 25 years later, that columnist has gone back to listening to vinyl records, which "reignited for me a long-missing air of full engagement... Technology marches forward, except when it occasionally lurches backward...")

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