Remember Napster? No, I don’t mean the thing that Rhapsody owns. I mean, the real Napster. Napster kicked off the whole music piracy revolution. Music was free. Napster eventually went away, and was replaced by KaZaA, and was eventually replaced by BitTorrent. What all these programs/technologies did was allow people to pirate content with relative ease.

How Music Got Free is the history of the music industry from the early beginnings to the launch of BitTorrent. As someone who was a teenager when Napster was released and is now watching the Spotify/Apple battle unfold, I’ve seen a big transition in how music is sold and consumed in my life.

I really enjoyed this book. It goes in depth into the technical beginnings of the MP3/AAC standards, the operations of the piracy industry, and how the music industry allowed Apple and others to control the steering wheel of the digital transition. If you are a fan of music or the music industry, you’ll love this book.

Get it on Kindle for $14.99 or iBooks for $14.99.