Pop Song Piracy

Pop Song Piracy
Author: Barry Kernfeld
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0226431835

The music industry’s ongoing battle against digital piracy is just the latest skirmish in a long conflict over who has the right to distribute music. Starting with music publishers’ efforts to stamp out bootleg compilations of lyric sheets in 1929, Barry Kernfeld’s Pop Song Piracy details nearly a century of disobedient music distribution from song sheets to MP3s. In the 1940s and ’50s, Kernfeld reveals, song sheets were succeeded by fake books, unofficial volumes of melodies and lyrics for popular songs that were a key tool for musicians. Music publishers attempted to wipe out fake books, but after their efforts proved unsuccessful they published their own. Pop Song Piracy shows that this pattern of disobedience, prohibition, and assimilation recurred in each conflict over unauthorized music distribution, from European pirate radio stations to bootlegged live shows. Beneath this pattern, Kernfeld argues, there exists a complex give and take between distribution methods that merely copy existing songs (such as counterfeit CDs) and ones that transform songs into new products (such as file sharing). Ultimately, he contends, it was the music industry’s persistent lagging behind in creating innovative products that led to the very piracy it sought to eliminate.

How Music Got Free

How Music Got Free
Author: Stephen Witt
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2015
Genre: Computer file sharing
ISBN: 0525426612

"Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet."--

Pop Song Piracy

Pop Song Piracy
Author: Barry Kernfeld
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0226431843

The music industry’s ongoing battle against digital piracy is just the latest skirmish in a long conflict over who has the right to distribute music. Starting with music publishers’ efforts to stamp out bootleg compilations of lyric sheets in 1929, Barry Kernfeld’s Pop Song Piracy details nearly a century of disobedient music distribution from song sheets to MP3s. In the 1940s and ’50s, Kernfeld reveals, song sheets were succeeded by fake books, unofficial volumes of melodies and lyrics for popular songs that were a key tool for musicians. Music publishers attempted to wipe out fake books, but after their efforts proved unsuccessful they published their own. Pop Song Piracy shows that this pattern of disobedience, prohibition, and assimilation recurred in each conflict over unauthorized music distribution, from European pirate radio stations to bootlegged live shows. Beneath this pattern, Kernfeld argues, there exists a complex give and take between distribution methods that merely copy existing songs (such as counterfeit CDs) and ones that transform songs into new products (such as file sharing). Ultimately, he contends, it was the music industry’s persistent lagging behind in creating innovative products that led to the very piracy it sought to eliminate.

Pop Idols and Pirates

Pop Idols and Pirates
Author: Charles Fairchild
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0754690024

The music industry has been waging significant battles in recent years, reacting to numerous inter-related crises provoked by globalization, digitalization and the ever more extensive commercialization of public culture. This book presents two inter-related cases of crisis and opportunity: the music industry's epic struggle over piracy and the 'Idol' phenomenon. Both are explicit attempts to control and justify the particular ways in which the music industry makes money from popular music through specific kinds of relationships with consumers. When understood in specific relation to the battle against piracy, Fairchild's analysis of 'Idol' and the emerging promotional cultures of the music industry it exhibits shows how multiple sites of consumption, and attempts to mediate and control the circulation of popular music, are being used to combat the foundational challenges facing the music industry.

Year Zero

Year Zero
Author: Robert Reid
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2012
Genre: Extraterrestrial beings
ISBN: 0345534417

In the hilarious tradition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Reid goes on a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universe--and the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry.

Under the Black Flag

Under the Black Flag
Author: David Cordingly
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2013-02-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307763072

“This is the most authoritative and highly literate account of these pernicious people that I have ever read.”—Patrick O'Brian “[A] wonderfully entertaining history of pirates and piracy . . . a rip-roaring read . . . fascinating and unexpected.”—Men's Journal This rollicking account of the golden age of piracy is packed with vivid history and high seas adventure. David Cordingly, an acclaimed expert on pirates, reveals the spellbinding truth behind the legends of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Sir Francis Drake, the fierce female brigands Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and others who rode and robbed upon the world's most dangerous waters. Here, in thrilling detail, are the weapons they used, the ships they sailed, and the ways they fought—and were defeated. Under the Black Flag also charts the paths of fictional pirates such as Captain Hook and Long John Silver. The definitive resource on the subject, this book is as captivating as it is supremely entertaining. Praise for Under the Black Flag “[A] lively history . . . If you've ever been seduced by the myth of the cutlass-wielding pirate, consider David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag.”—USA Today, “Best Bets” “Engagingly told . . . a tale of the power of imaginative literature to re-create the past.”—Los Angeles Times “Entirely engaging and informative . . . a witty and spirited book.”—The Washington Post Book World “Plenty of thrills and adventure to satisfy any reader.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Circuit Listening

Circuit Listening
Author: Andrew F. Jones
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1452963266

How the Chinese pop of the 1960s participated in a global musical revolution What did Mao’s China have to do with the music of youth revolt in the 1960s? And how did the mambo, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan sound on the front lines of the Cold War in Asia? In Circuit Listening, Andrew F. Jones listens in on the 1960s beyond the West, and suggests how transistor technology, decolonization, and the Green Revolution transformed the sound of music around the globe. Focusing on the introduction of the transistor in revolutionary China and its Cold War counterpart in Taiwan, Circuit Listening reveals the hidden parallels between music as seemingly disparate as rock and roll and Maoist anthems. It offers groundbreaking studies of Mandarin diva Grace Chang and the Taiwanese folk troubadour Chen Da, examines how revolutionary aphorisms from the Little Red Book parallel the Beatles’ “Revolution,” uncovers how U.S. military installations came to serve as a conduit for the dissemination of Anglophone pop music into East Asia, and shows how consumer electronics helped the pop idol Teresa Teng bring the Maoist era to a close, remaking the contemporary Chinese soundscape forever. Circuit Listening provides a multifaceted history of Chinese-language popular music and media at midcentury. It profiles a number of the most famous and best loved Chinese singers and cinematic icons, and places those figures in a larger geopolitical and technological context. Circuit Listening’s original research and far-reaching ideas make for an unprecedented look at the role Chinese music played in the ’60s pop musical revolution.

The Story of Fake Books

The Story of Fake Books
Author: Barry Kernfeld
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2006-08-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 146170202X

Fake books—anthologies of songs notated in a musical shorthand—have been used by countless pop and jazz musicians in both professional and amateur settings for more than half a century. The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians traces the entertaining and previously unknown account of the origins of pop song fake books, which evolved through the bootlegging of a now obscure musical subscription service, the Tune-Dex. The book follows the history of fake books through their increased popularity among musicians to their prosecution by the government and the music industry, resulting in America's first full-blown federal trial for criminal copyright infringement. Through accounts given by jazz musicians Steve Swallow and Pat Metheny, The Story of Fake Books also reveals the definitive history of the most popular fake book, one that has acquired a legendary status among jazz musicians: an anthology of jazz tunes called The Real Book. Drawing from information in FBI files, entertainment trade papers, and federal court records, author Barry Kernfeld presents pioneering research, which brings together aspects of pop music history and copyright law to disclose this predecessor of current-day battles over pop song piracy.

Pirate Cinema

Pirate Cinema
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Teen
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1429943181

From the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow, comes Pirate Cinema, a new tale of a brilliant hacker runaway who finds himself standing up to tyranny. Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household's access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal. Trent's too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke. Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven't entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people's minds.... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.