Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

Recounts for the first time the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world--and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, journalist Knopper shows that, after the wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources--from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning--Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride.… (more)