[78-L] "Appetite for Self-Destruction" reviewed

[David Lennick]

Does it come on AudioBooks?

dl

David Weiner wrote:
> When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won 
> 
> "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry
> in the Digital Age." By Steve Knopper. 301 pages. Free Press. $26. 
> 
> by Dwight Garner
> New York Times, January 7, 2009
> 
> "You can't roll a joint on an iPod," the singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne told
> The New York Times Magazine early last year. And, O.K., I suppose that's
> among the iPod's drawbacks. But it's hard to think of an electronic device
> released in recent decades that's brought more pleasure to more people.
> 
> Should anyone care that in the process, the iPod has all but killed the
> music industry as we've known it? Maybe not, Steve Knopper writes in
> "Appetite for Self-Destruction," his stark accounting of the mistakes major
> record labels have made since the end of the LP era and the arrival of
> digital music. These dinosaurs, he suggests, are largely responsible for
> their own demise.
> 
> Mr. Knopper, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, provides a wide-angled,
> morally complicated view of the current state of the music business. He
> doesn't let those rippers and burners among us -- that is, those who
> download digital songs without paying for them, and you know who you are --
> entirely off the hook. But he suggests that with even a little foresight,
> record companies could have adapted to the Internet's brutish and quizzical
> new realities and thrived.
> 
> This is a story that begins in earnest in the early 1980s, when digital
> music first arrived in the form of the compact disc. At first, Mr. Knopper
> suggests, almost everyone was frightened of these small, shiny new toys.
> 
> The labels worried about digital piracy and about refitting the factories
> that made vinyl LPs. Record stores didn't want to buy new sales racks.
> Producers worried about the effects on recording sessions, now that every
> footstep and door click would be audible. A group called MAD (Musicians
> Against Digital) quickly formed, and artists like Neil Young declared that
> CDs were soulless.
> 
> "The mind has been tricked," Mr. Young said at the time, sounding a bit like
> Yoda, "but the heart is sad." 
> 
> The labels came around because they could jack up prices. (LPs at the time
> sold for about $9; most CDs went for almost twice that.) Labels could also
> renegotiate contracts with artists and force customers to buy entire new
> album collections. According to Mr. Knopper, executives also thought it was
> cool watching "that little drawer open and close" on CD players. 
> 
> Producers and artists came around, Mr. Knopper says, because the CD "just
> sounded better than the LP, no matter how much its detractors complain to
> this day about losing the rich, warm analog sound." But record stores
> remained resistant, and thus the existence of the much loathed cardboard or
> plastic "longboxes" -- remember those? -- until the early 1990s. (The author
> reminds us that in the movie "Defending Your Life" Albert Brooks's character
> dies as he tries to tear one open while driving.) 
> 
> "The CD boom lasted from 1984 to 2000," Mr. Knopper writes. Then the residue
> of old mistakes and a wave of new realities began hammering the music
> industry from all sides.
> 
> One of the first things the labels got wrong, Mr. Knopper says, was the
> elimination of the single. It got young people out of the habit of regularly
> visiting record stores and forced them to buy an entire CD to get the one
> song they craved. In the short term this was good business practice. In the
> long term it built up animosity. It was suicidal.
> 
> When Napster and other music-sharing Web sites showed up, the single came
> back with a vengeance. Before long MP3 -- the commonly used term for
> digitally compressed and easily traded audio files -- had replaced sex as
> the most searched-for term on sites like Yahoo! and AltaVista. 
> 
> The record industry bungled the coming of Napster. Instead of striking a
> deal with a service that had more than 26 million users, labels sued,
> forcing it to close. A result, Mr. Knopper writes, was that users simply
> splintered, fleeing to many other file-sharing sites. "That was the last
> chance," he declares, "for the record industry as we know it to stave off
> certain ruin." 
> 
> Some of the seeds for this debacle were planted much earlier, during an
> industry fight in the mid-1980s over Digital Audio Tape (DAT). The labels,
> once again worried about illegal copying, installed a widget on DATs that
> permitted songs to be copied only once. But they made a short-sighted
> allowance for CD-rewrite drives on computers. Users could copy music almost
> endlessly there. Oops. "They blew it," a Sony marketer says. "Completely." 
> 
> The final sections of "Appetite for Self-Destruction" describe the arrival
> of Steve Jobs and Apple on the scene. The release of the iPod was a kind of
> coup de grace for the struggling industry. Before long, Apple became
> America's biggest music retailer. Music executives watched, apoplectic and
> helpless. "Apple had basically taken over the entire music business," Mr.
> Knopper writes. 
> 
> He paints a devastating picture of the industry's fumbling, corruption,
> greed and bad faith over the decades. ("The business ain't full of Martin
> Luther Kings," one former music executive admits.) 
> 
> It's too bad his interesting arguments and observations are wedged into such
> an uningratiating book. The prose in "Appetite for Self-Destruction" is
> undercooked, packed with clichés (the stakes are always high, people
> constantly take the fall, one-two punches are thrown) and awkward
> descriptions. Michael Jackson "danced like a backwards angel, screeched and
> squealed"; the Sony executive Tommy Mottola "wore gold chains and purple
> leather jackets and looked cool." 
> 
> What's more, Mr. Knopper apparently did not get access to many of the major
> players in this tale, including Mr. Jobs. His account rehashes material
> covered in earlier, better books, including "Hit Men" by Fredric Dannen and
> "The Perfect Thing" by Steven Levy. 
> 
> The record labels have, in the last few years, found some new reasons to
> believe. Ring tones have become serious business. Computer games like Guitar
> Hero and Rock Band have taken off, and need to be fed with new songs. And
> there's always the hope that Apple's near monopoly on music sales will be
> broken by other devices and services, allowing the labels to bargain for a
> better cut on song sales.
> 
> That could be a long wait. Apple will always be hard to beat. Mr. Jobs is
> probably at work right now on an iPod that will roll Shelby Lynne's joint
> for her.
> 
> ------------------------------------
> 
> 
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