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So, who was so powerful in the first fifteen years of the new millennium that quickly destroyed the record industry? “How does music become a free lunch” is quite appetizing, and first laid out three clues in silence: a group of German scientists invented the digital music format MP3 after hard research; a group of technological elites with cultural utopian ideas put The CD is compressed into MP3 and put on the Internet for free download; the recording industry represented by the world’s largest music group, Universal Music Group, is defeated by MP3 and Internet technology, and the records produced by it are stolen by criminals and become the people of the world You can enjoy free meals.

The protagonist of the book that links these three clues together is the key person who broke the record industry by himself. However, unexpectedly, this key figure is a blue-collar worker at the bottom of society-a record packer at Universal Music’s CD manufacturing plant, named Dell Grove. Grove stole more than two thousand CDs from the record production line in eight years, and these CDs eventually became free MP3s on the Internet. It’s just that a brick in the corner is rotten, and the magnificent building of Universal Music collapsed in a moment.

Ordinary readers are most interested in the book “How Music Turns into Free Lunch” That detective gangster story, how this low-level blue-collar worker Grove, who caused hundreds of billions of dollars in losses in the world, stole, how to deal with FBI and other law enforcement units, and how he was finally caught. For the recording industry practitioners, what they read was how innocently victimized they were in the industry, and how their hard-working music was stolen by the ghosts in the industry. But the question arises, in the book “How Does Music Turn into Free Lunch”, is the recording industry really just a victim of purely pirated digital music?

obviously not . Think about it will not be.

The history of digital music piracy described in “How Music Turns into Free Lunch” is not new in nature, it is just another “” The old line meets new technology ” drama code, One hundred and fifty years in the history of the recording industry is also uncommon ——For example, after the end of World War II, the American Columbia Record Company and RCA Record Company invented the dense vinyl record made of celluloid. The British veteran record empire EMI adopted a conservative wait-and-see attitude. Danger is about to fall. When the MP3 tide hit the traditional record industry in the early 21st century, the basic plot is the same, the only difference is that this new technology comes from outside the industry, and it makes the goods available for free.

The reason why “Music became a free lunch” chose Universal Music Group as the writing object of its record industry clues, not only Only the “Jiang Yang bandit” Grove came out of Universal. More importantly, in this narrow encounter between the “front wave” and the “back wave”, Universal, as the world’s largest record group, will definitely adopt indifference, conservatism and resistance to new Technology strategy, and then push yourself to a dead end.

The history of MP3 overturning the recording industry occurred in the first ten years of the new century, but the author ’s description of Doug Morris, then CEO of Universal Music, did not hesitate to follow from the top. In the 1960s, he began to write in the recording industry. The purpose was to tell readers that this industry crocodile who adhered to the iron law of the recording industry in the whole life and followed the record sales volume as an outline. . For example, when the public downloaded free MP3s, Morris even approved lawyers to randomly sue ordinary fans who downloaded pirated copies instead of grabbing the source of piracy (and this source is in his own company). Ineffective action.

However, it ’s not fair to blame everything on the defense and pedantry of the Doug Morrisians. The world ’s record industry was already a highly monopolistic industry when the MP3 threat came, and monopolies meant that enterprises “Large volume”, large volume means “big tail” As the world’s largest monopoly, monopoly is destined to fail to turn around in time.

The author has written too much in this book about the “unfinished tail” of Universal Music in this era of dysfunctional history, such as being a scientist When we introduced MP3 to major record companies including Universal, the record tycoons adopted an attitude of gratitude and insincerity, thinking that MP3 sound quality is not good, and their customers have the highest requirements for sound quality. Can’t hear the difference between 128K MP3 and CD; for example, when hip-hop singer Lil Wayne made Mixtape and made a lot of money by burning disc sales, his bosses did not understand what he was doing, which in turn prevented this behavior. And he broke his great fortune, and so on.

In this industry, coupled with a group of royal lawyers who believe that” Linux (operating system) is a town in Canada “to help them fight lawsuits, how could they not lose to MP3?

In addition, there are some small fuse lines in the book “How Music Turns into Free Lunch” that may not even be realized by the author himself, such as a “strange” Phenomenon “: The big record companies themselves tend to reject new technologies, but their parent groups often embrace new technologies ahead of time.

The first chapter of the book mentioned MP3 research and the standard struggle when it was mentioned that the predecessor of Universal Music, the Polycom Records in the “Five Major Records”, its parent group was the Philips Group that invented the CD format. In the 1980s and 1990s, when Dayingte made CD license fees, it was already fully supporting the research and development of audio compression technology to make money for the next generation of music carriers. For another example, when the “Big Five Recording Group” suddenly faced Napster, It is the parent group of BMG Records-the German Bertelsmann Group, the first to cooperate with this “enemy”, and so on.

It can be seen that the formation of the golden age of records in the 1990s and the parent group of the “Five Major Records” at the time were electrical or media groups. Not irrelevant, but when facing MP3, the head boss of the record groupHowever, they have become new players in the wine industry, public utilities and private equity funds. They do n’t understand anything. It is a strange thing to be blinded by the eyes and operate in a mess. Not being taken by the new technology. .

Ghost Dale Grove in the world was finally captured by the FBI, and the free lunch of music began to decrease gradually. In 2015, when Got Free was published, the global record industry fell to the bottom and began to bottom out.

Five years later, in April 2020, when the simplified Chinese version of “How Music Got Free” “How Music Turns into Free Lunch” was officially launched in China, “Mould” Taylor Swift’s new album “Lover” The digital album sold more than 15 million copies of QQ music, NetEase Cloud Music sold 687,000 copies, and the sales volume was roughly 30 million yuan. This score of 30 million is enough for the record company “Mold” to sign, Universal Music Group, to be overjoyed and advertised everywhere, but do n’t forget that in “How Music Got Free”, Universal is the one The free download of music kills the old empire of records that almost did not stay and almost collapsed.

So, if in 2015, the European and American music industry employees handed a “How Music Got Free” to explore their own past, then in 2020, the Chinese music industry practitioners won the “How Music becomes a Free Lunch” “” When reading, you can think about it, there should be more …