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Apr 13, 2011

Lightreads rated it:

A quite nice discussion of the imploding record industry (as opposed to the music industry). Full of color and bombastic personality, as appropriate. Unfortunately, I’m the sort of person whose opinion on a book can be irrevocably ruined by details. To wit, a note about how, when initially launched, iTunes took 22 cents out of every 99 cent song purchase for itself, leaving 67 cents to be divided among the various rights holders.

. . . uh . . .

I hope everyone from the auth More...

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Mar 27, 2009

Sarah rated it:

Oh, the U.S. music industry: you made us hate you. You really, really did. Don't be angry because we learned to hate you too well.

This was an excellent look at the battle between major music labels and their heels-dug-in resistance to changing technology, opinions, and taste over the past several decades. With a host of employees as colorful as the artists they represent, it's no wonder life at a major label has resembled a ride on a roller coaster. Seeing the details and history beh More...

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Feb 04, 2011

Blog on Books rated it:

What appears as a tale of the modern day record era actually dates back even further. Music writer, Steve Knopper begins his treatise, not in the post-digital era as one might imagine from the title, but from the post-Disco era, when the business was awash with money, excesses and a party atmosphere that pre-dates the decades long saviours of MTV and the CD era boom.

While much of what Knopper writes about has been covered extensively in other volumes (most notably Stan Cornyn’s “Explod More...

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Aug 03, 2009

Gphatty rated it:

This book is part hard journalism; part celebrity gossip. In both cases, the targets are not the musicians who create music, but their managers; the A&R people; the music industry CEO's of large companies -- in short, most everyone responsible for pushing trends and pop tarts, soulless and manufactured pop crap, for the last 30 years.
My take on this book: the author does a fair job convincing me that the music industry has been so used to growing at a rapid clip, through methods both dubi More...

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Jul 21, 2009

David rated it:

pretty interesting history of exactly what the subtitle indicates. Author pushes the view that record companies did not have to suffer when downloading became possible, if they had had the foresight to get on board with ideas such Itunes rather than fighting rearguard action to try to protect the old model of selling albums/CD's.

I'm not sure about that. Maybe they could have lost less money, and generated less ill will from customers (suing individuals for pirating music probably More...

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Mar 06, 2009

Surfing Moose rated it:

Well I've never been a fan of the majors even when my favorite acts ended up on them (eventually). This book gave me more insight and answers to questions I had into why they f'd up with the digital evolution. I ended up seeing a similarity between the exec's of the music industry and the greed of Wall Street.

That being said, I still love my cds. The art work, the actual physicality of the cd itself, and especially I love albums over singles. The singles I like are the extended versi More...

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Jul 08, 2011

Jason rated it:

Good: A fantastic account of the many ways the record industry failed to accept the digital future of music. The book speaks in large part to the business behind the music you listen to.

Bad: The audiobook reader was PAINFUL to listen to. I almost got the sense that he was cutting his teeth on his very first audiobook. About a third of the way through his reading style changes to a lower, more listenable tone, but his over-enunciation... his mispronounciation of certain names, his inf More...

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Feb 26, 2011

Todd rated it:

Appetite for Self-Destruction is a lesson of what happens when an industry is unwilling to change in response to new technology. Through their reluctance to embrace MP3s and by clinging to an antiquated business model involving the sales of pieces of vinyl or plastic, the record industry has lost profits, prestige and the public trust. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.

Knopper does a good job describing this history, industry motivations and personalities behind the major labels. More...

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Aug 26, 2009

Hillery rated it:

Key takeaway from the book: "...the record business is doomed. The music business, however, has a bright future."

No surprise; we probably already knew that, but Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Steve Knopper provides a lot of interesting details and background on how this came to pass. He personally interviewed many of the senior execs in the music business from the past 30 years and has lots of interesting stories. The book tackles the period from the post-disco crash More...

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Jan 22, 2010

Rob rated it:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sad for a music fan to read., January 22, 2010
By Crutnacker "Crutnacker" (Louisville, KY) - See all my reviews

Ever since I was 9, I've been a huge music fan, buying first records, then cassettes, then CDs by the boatload. During my college days in the early 90's, I lived my life in Tower Records and Newbury Comics browsing the racks. I think most people my age watched the demise of the music industry in the past ten years with a certain More...

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Feb 03, 2009

Brendan rated it:

Here is the history of the music business in brief: There used to be hundreds of labels all over the world, then the radio companies started buying up artists and they owned all the means of production and distribution for LPs which were heavy and expensive to ship and fans boycotted any record that cost more than $8.99. Disco was huge for them and they grew bigger and more consolidated and didn't expect the backlash. Then everyone boycotted disco for no reason (some believe because disco was More...

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Oct 27, 2011

Orsolya rated it:

One doesn’t have to work in the music industry (although that is indeed my career background); to know that things aren’t looking so good right now. However, that also depends on where you’re standing. Regardless, the clarity of the situation is that things changed with digital. Not just digital in the iTunes realm, but dating back to the advent of CDs. That is where Appetite for Self-Destruction begins…

Appetite for Self-Destruction is divided into time frames depicting how each era More...

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Aug 25, 2009

Andy rated it:

An interesting journey through the record industry's arrogant missteps as they tried to both maintain the status quo, milk the fat profits of the CD-ROM revolution, and get completely blindsided by peer-to-peer file sharing. The book itself is well-researched but lacks an overall cohesiveness, tending to bounce among topics e.g music genres, studios and their respective executives, payola, recording artists (a lot on 'Boy Bands') and so on while still attempting to follow a general time line. To More...

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Feb 05, 2010

Aubrey marked it as to-read

Says Ami Greko:
"Wow, this book is a must-read for anyone working in the publishing industry. The similarities between what happened to music when the MP3 came into prominence and what is happening currently with ebooks are striking, and a little scary.

Knopper provides excellent context for the downfall of the record labels by beginning with the invention of the CD and tracing how the mishandling of this new product created a terrible, terrible blueprint that the industry t More...

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Apr 13, 2011

Lumpenprole rated it:

Big egos, big money, arrogance, the stupidity of dinosaurs in a tar pit, yep, its all here. In almost overwhelming detail. Not my normal cup of tea, but still interesting.

As a sidenote: copying the audiobook to my Ipod produced a nightmare of something like 900 "tracks," since each disc had a new track every 30 or so seconds. Thought that was a bit ironic, each time I hit the view by "song" button and this audiobook seemingling seemingly overwhelmed everything else. More...

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Jan 24, 2009

Paulisded rated it:

Finally, somebody has the balls to tell the real reasons why the record business is dying. Yes, downloading is one of the reasons, but as Knopper reports, if record companies had worked WITH Napster they could have had a working model for online sales before the majority of consumers even realized they could download material. Knopper also talks about the over-reliance on the $16 CD, the over-spending on trends that were destined to die, and the move from music people running the industry to mar More...

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Jan 13, 2012

John rated it:

I read part of this book to support a paper I had to write for school. The paper was about selling music on-line, and this book has some good information about the major record labels disdain for the idea of selling music on-line instead of in the format of a CD. I decided to finish reading the book to get a full picture of what the author was describing, and I found the whole story fairly interesting. It is sort of amusing how people who a wonderfully successful at something can get stuck in More...

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Apr 13, 2011

Brendan rated it:

Appetite for Self Destruction is a book about the music industry that I loved. Here is the history of the music business in brief: There used to be hundreds of labels all over the world, then the radio companies started buying up artists and they owned all the means of production and distribution for LPs which were heavy and expensive to ship and fans boycotted any record that cost more than $8.99. Disco was huge for them and they grew bigger and more consolidated and didn't expect the backlas More...

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Mar 25, 2010

Christina rated it:

I'm not a huge music consumer, but it doesn't take a genius to to figure out something has gone terribly wrong in the music industry in the last 10 years. This book gives all of the ugly details about how they mishandled opportunities and failed to foresee the future. There are many great business lessons to be learned from this book.

The music industry has been so focused on fighting piracy and punishing anyone who steals their music via the digital format they have gained a negati More...

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Apr 27, 2010

Dan rated it:

If you are interested in the recording industry, then you will enjoy this book.

The stubbornness of the various record executives to adapt was amazing and came down to one thing - greed. They did not want to let go of the old ways because they were making money hand over fist.

The transition from LP to CD and the increase in profits that the record companies made with the new contracts was sickening.

On one hand stealing is stealing, but the record companies did More...

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Jun 24, 2009

Ryan rated it:

A nice survey of the music industry from the 1980s til now. There aren't any real conclusions drawn about the digital-driven sea changes of the past few years, other than the usual finger-pointing and scapegoating. What I did enjoy, though, was how Knopper so vividly paints a portrait of the CD-era boom times. Major labels were making so much money, and were so greedy about their condescending attitudes toward fans, that the ensuing industry seizure feels less like a downfall and more like a cor More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Ed rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. I have developed an avid interest in the recording industry, from its inception pre-1900 to the current digital miasma. I lived through records and 8-tracks (I purchased music in both formats! Don't ask what--I'll never tell!), built my high-school music collection on cassettes (Ack!), and wholeheartedly embraced CDs (I love them...there I said it)... The music industry has been on a downward spiral (NIN) from which recovery looks doubtful. This book is written in cle More...

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Sep 25, 2010

Julie rated it:

This was certainly interesting, filled with a lot of fascinating facts. But I felt like Knopper wasn't really trying to convince me of the record industry's foolishness; he was writing as if we all already agreed. So there was a lot of stuff about how record execs are jerks, but what does that prove? What does it prove that Lou Pearlman was an asshole? Nothing. Entertaining anyway.

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Feb 05, 2010

Ami rated it:

Wow, this book is a must-read for anyone working in the publishing industry. The similarities between what happened to music when the MP3 came into prominence and what is happening currently with ebooks are striking, and a little scary.

Knopper provides excellent context for the downfall of the record labels by beginning with the invention of the CD and tracing how the mishandling of this new product created a terrible, terrible blueprint that the industry tried to follow again for M More...

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Jul 17, 2009

Archie rated it:

The chain of self-destruction from the music industry as taste-maker to the public to the current sorry state of nearly universal antipathy is actually a long, complicated, almost deliberate course of willful ignorance about the changing nature of the business. Only be completely ignoring the world around them could the most powerful, top-level industry executives manage to destroy the cash cow that brought them untold millions of dollars. But somehow, they managed. This is the story, and it' More...

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Apr 13, 2011

Darren rated it:

At first glance this book may appear to be quite a dry read. However in reality it is anything but, delivering a quickfire history of the greed and strategic errors made by the major label music industry from the disco period through to the present day. Whilst you certainly aren't left feeling sympathetic for the majors, I think one thing I took from this is that they simply show the same greed as any other large corporation. Or, in other words, they adhered to the "if it ain't broke..." More...

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Jun 07, 2009

Daniel rated it:

Not the best thing ever, but a crisp history of how the record business screwed the pooch w/r/t digital music. Suffers a bit from the whole "Obviously Napster was the answer" boosterism of the internet futurist set. Still, some amusing anecdotes about the old-time record folks and what seems an accurate portrait of what happens when a bloated mega-industry is forced into the future.

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Mar 20, 2009

Tricia rated it:

A really interesting and quick read. The real highlight of the book are the 8 big music big mistakes. Instead of the story being just about the rise of Napster and iTunes, Knopper talks about the Cd Longbox, the Decline of the Single. A really fascinating read for music lovers with an interest in the industry. It's particularly interesting for someone in the publishing industry since there is a clear parallel between the two: selling content in digital channels, dealing with the rise of big box More...

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Jun 26, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

More of what we already figured, with more detail. I thought this book would add something new to the discussion, but it seemed to rehash the same ideas already thrown around. The only part I really enjoyed were the case studies - about 4 - 5 pages per chapter covering a reason for the recording industry's downfall.

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Jan 11, 2009

Kevin rated it:

A great, compulsively-readable history of the music industry from the disco era through last year. Huge personalities, decadence, excess, and thoroughly boneheaded decisions. Delicious schadenfreude. Highly recommended to anyone who likes music and technology, or came of age in the Napster era.

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