By Steve Knopper
For the 1st time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic tale of the precipitous upward thrust and fall of the recording over the last 3 many years, whilst the great good fortune of the CD became the tune enterprise into essentially the most glamorous, high-profile industries on this planet -- and the arrival of dossier sharing introduced it to its knees. In a finished, fast paced account filled with larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper indicates that, after the excellent wealth and far more than the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the opposite giant avid gamers led to their very own downfall via years of denial and undesirable judgements within the face of dramatic advances in know-how.
tremendous tune has been asleep on the wheel ever on the grounds that Napster revolutionized the best way track used to be allotted within the Nineties. Now, simply because strong humans like Doug Morris and Tommy Mottola didn't realize the fantastic capability of file-sharing expertise, the labels are at risk of changing into thoroughly out of date. Knopper, who has been writing concerning the for greater than ten years, has unprecedented entry to these in detail taken with the track world's highs and lows. in keeping with interviews with greater than 2 hundred tune resources -- from Warner song chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster author Shawn Fanning -- Knopper is the 1st to provide this sort of certain and sweeping modern background of the industry's wild experience during the earlier 3 a long time. From the delivery of the compact disc, during the explosion of CD revenues within the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the key talks that resulted in iTunes, to the present cave in of the as CD revenues plummet, Knopper takes us contained in the boardrooms, recording studios, deepest estates, storage computing device labs, corporation jets, company infighting, and mystery bargains of the massive names and behind-the-scenes avid gamers who made all of it occur.
With unforgettable photographs of the track world's powerful and previously powerful; designated bills of either incredible and silly principles dropped at fruition or left at the cutting-room ground; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and a number of other formerly unreported tales, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and hugely exciting learn. It bargains a vast point of view at the present country of massive song, the way it received into those dire straits, and the place it's going from the following -- and a cautionary story for the electronic age.