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Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music

Name: Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music
Author: Greg Kot
ISBN: 9781416547273

by Greg Kot

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Overview

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 afascinating tale of backward thinking, forward thinking, and the power of music.

Synopsis

No less than a decade ago, the majority of mainstream music was funneled through a handful of media conglomerates. But now more individuals are listening to more music from a greater variety of sources than at any time in history. Ripped tells the story of how the laptop generation created a new music industry, with fans and bands rather than 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. Since this digital revolution hit the music industry, its infiltration into every other form of media has been well documented, if often not well understood. Ripped brilliantly illustrates how, when, and where the changes happened first and leaves us with an understanding of how to move forward.

The New York Times - Dana Jennings

…the most fascinating part of the book is its retelling of how the big music companies committed capitalist suicide. The executives couldn't get their analog heads around the digital future. If industry leaders had always followed their mistrust of technology, we'd still be listening to music on 78-r.p.m. shellac, or maybe even wax cylinders. Ripped is another case study in American industrial arrogance, an account of companies that couldn't (or wouldn't) learn agility.

About the Author, Greg Kot

Greg Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune since 1990. He has established a national reputation not just for his comprehensive coverage of popular music — from hip-hop to rock — but for enterprising reporting on music-related social, political and business issues. His Tribune-hosted blog, Turn it Up, is considered a must-read for music buffs and industry insiders alike. With his Chicago Sun-Times counterpart Jim DeRogatis, Kot cohosts Sound Opinions, "the world's only rock 'n' roll talk show," nationally syndicated in over twenty markets and avialable worldwide on the web. Kot has been a regular contributor to Rolling Stone since 1992, and has written for Details, Blender, Entertainment Weekly, Men's Journal, Guitar World, Vibe and Request. Kot’s biography of Wilco, Learning How to Die, was published in June 2004. He lives on Chicago's Northwest Side with his wife, two daughters, and far too many records.

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Editorials

Mark Athitakis

Kot's philosophy is appealingly simple—anything serving fans and artists is good, anything serving corporate honchos isn't—though it sometimes seems overly rosy…Still, Kot's instincts are on-point: His skepticism about the corporate record industry is inspired by recent events, and there are decades of bad behavior to back him up.
—The Washington Post

Dana Jennings

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)

Library Journal

Kot, Chicago Tribune music critic and cohost of the syndicated radio show Sound Opinions, offers a perceptive, unblinking, and up-to-the-minute take on the seismic transformations of the recording industry in the digital age. Like Steve Knopper's Appetite for Self-Destruction, Kot's book helps to illuminate the tangled and complex history of digital music-its production, distribution, and sales-over the past 30 years. While Knopper's title is rich in profiles of record label moguls and software executives, Kot focuses more on the artists, including how they reacted to MP3 file sharing and distribution. Trent Reznor, Prince, U2, and Radiohead parlayed the new opportunities brought on by the decline of the recording industry to their advantage. Artists such as Death Cab for Cutie, Arcade Fire, Lily Allen, and others are profiled as unique phenomena of the new digital age. Kot organizes his book by topic rather than chronologically. His breezy, entertaining, journalistic style and sympathetic tone consistently draw in the reader. Essential for all those interested in the intersection of music and technology.
—Larry Lipkis

Kirkus Reviews

Clear, concise and entertaining account of the tectonic shift in the recording industry over the past decade, thanks to technological innovations like the Internet, the MP3 and the iPod..Music critic for the Chicago Tribune and co-host of NPR's Sound Opinions, Kot (Wilco: Learning How to Die, 2004, etc.) begins by chronicling the rise and fall of the compact disc, introduced in 1983. It was the recording industry's cash cow, forcing consumers to replace vinyl albums at exorbitant prices that bore little relation to costs. Beginning in the summer of 1999, however, Napster and other file-sharing applications gave fans the means to acquire music without paying for it. The resulting collapse of the CD market led the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to launch a campaign to sue illegal downloaders—including 12-year-old girls and at least one single mother on welfare—ostensibly to recover lost copyright fees but also to intimidate consumers back into the music-buying habit. Alas, for the RIAA, the downloading genie was out of the bottle, and the music industry would never be the same. Despite the best efforts of corporations to consolidate control over the star-making machinery, Kot shows how increasingly sophisticated musicians and fans found ways to create new standards for assessing what is and is not a hit. Each chapter tells a story about key participants in this revolution, from Napster's Shawn Fanning and Ryan Schreiber of the influential webzine Pitchfork to unlikely rock gods Death Cab for Cutie, Girl Talk and Arcade Fire. Some artists, like Metallica, who joined the RIAA in going after Napster-using fans, struggled and failed to come to terms with radical change.Others, like Prince and Radiohead, the heroes of this book, led full-frontal assaults in the music revolution, leaping ahead of the record companies—and reaping rich rewards for themselves—by offering fans free music and more choice in the packages they might be willing to pay for..Indispensable for anyone who wants to understand popular music in the 21st century.

Booklist

"Kot is a talented critic."

The New York Times

“Mr. Kot, who writes in an engaging but highly anecdotal style, does a nimble job of showing how the Internet has lifted the careers of particular musicians.”

The Boston Globe

"A well-researched and highly opinionated history. . . . This book makes for provocative reading, but Kot is above all a music lover and that comes across nomatter which side of the issue you’re on.”

Christian Science Monitor

“[Ripped] is the best kind of journalism, even-tempered and provocative, factual and soulful.”

The New York Times Book Review

“Greg Kot tell us what happened . . . in his well-reported book about music in the Internet Age. . . . Kot understands that it’s always entertaining to detail the thrash and roar of a carnivorous dinosaur in its death throes, as small and clever mammals—in this case, music lovers—win the day.”