How Music Got Free

A Story of Obsession and Invention

Author  Stephen Witt
How Music Got Free

Now a Paramount+ docuseries narrated by Method Man and produced by Marshall "Eminem" Mathers, LeBron James, and more

One of Billboard’s 100 Greatest Music Books of All Time, by the author of The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip

What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime?

How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It’s about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store.

Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers…