Customers used to only really care about getting their favorite entertainment, regardless of the method, as long as they could.
Still making millions at the box office, bootleg blockbusters frequently arrived in plastic bags at the hair salon or barbershop directly to them. Thanks to websites like Limewire or Napster, they could download the newest music on their PCs. Even young individuals in the late 1990s working part-time jobs for $6 an hour could afford to attend concerts.
Well, access is irrelevant until it’s taken away from them (as was the case in 2001 when a federal judge ordered Napster to close after it was determined to violate copyright) or until it becomes a financially crippling issue.
This last aspect served as the impetus for the Department of Justice’s antitrust action against Live Nation, the company that runs Ticketmaster, a popular ticketing website that came to a catastrophic end when some Swifties attempted in vain to purchase tickets to see their lady play live in 2022. The complaint was filed against Live Nation this year.
The bureaucratic and frequent racial structure of access is the key issue that cannot be disregarded at this point in the process. While seeing “How Music Got Free,” the insightful new documentary from director Alex Stapleton that explores the modest beginnings and amazing consequences of music piracy, that was the main notion on everyone’s mind.
The docuseries sheds light on the complex, legal, and pressing issue of music availability. It was partially inspired by Stephen Witt’s 2015 New Yorker piece, “The Man Who Broke the Music Business.” Witt is also a producer of “How Music Got Free.” The brilliant, yet until recently unknown, Black mind at the center of it all is the focus of the series.
Record executive Steve Stoute, Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine, journalists Rocsi Diaz, pirates, law enforcement, artists such as Rhymefest and Eminem, and high-ranking music marketers at Universal and Interscope are among the people who participate in the documentary “How Music Got Free.”
Jimmy Iovine, a record producer and businessman, is profiled in “How Music Got Free.”
Jimmy Iovine, a businessman and record producer, is featured in “How Music Got Free.” PARAMOUNT+
While they continue to work through the difficult topics of the two-episode series, they assist in placing the story in context. During a one-hour call with Stapleton, I brought up its main concern, which is the bureaucracy around access to music. She got my drift right away.
The director started by saying, “I think that as consumers and makers, we’re always at odds with the bureaucratic nature of the labels and just industry standards.”
Stapleton continued, “The narrative at the heart of “How Music Got Free” is only one example. The current state of the music industry, according to her, is one in which live concerts and artist tours account for a large portion of revenue. “The prices will just keep going up and up and up and up wherever you see that.”
I’ll get that done and move on. For instance, Beyoncé tickets can get over $1K, whereas luxury Taylor Swift tickets can fetch up to $200K. To further put things in perspective, the International Journal of Music Business Research states that the average ticket price in 2000 was $40.74. The current price, even accounting for inflation, would only be $74.18.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the period primarily shown in “How I Got Free,” music piracy evolved into both the ideal issue for record labels and recording artists as well as the ideal answer for fans who just wanted to listen to their favorite songs for free or at a reduced cost.
In light of this, CDs cost an average of $17 to the consumer, while they only cost about $1 to produce at the time for a variety of convoluted and “arbitrary” reasons. However, this was long before Netflix and Spotify, and before the majority of people were comfortable using the internet and downloading MP3s. Piracy was prohibited. Collaborating with the FBI, the labels ensured that.
Stapleton contends in “How I Got Free” that this was detrimental to the industry, especially as singles were becoming more and more in demand and CDs were about to become outdated.
Some of the hip-hop artists that comprised Stapleton’s massive digital music library in the late 1990s and early 2000s were Ludacris and OutKast; all of the music was pirated.
Hip-hop acts such as Ludacris and OutKast comprised Stapleton’s extensive digital music collection during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the music was entirely illegal. THEO WARGO VIA GETTY IMAGES
She stated, “I did want to poke fun at the idea of the lengths to which the industry, or these corporate kinds of places, will go.” “It’s amazing how little they refuse to do. They refuse to move on command. It is extremely difficult for businesses to embrace innovation and bring about change if they are profitable.
The fact that almost everyone was involved in this activity at the time, including Stapleton, makes the alleged threat of piracy and leaks very intriguing.
The director, who was raised on Southern hip-hop in Houston, relocated to New York City in the 1990s and chose his roommates carefully, taking into account who owned the greatest digital music collection.
“Because, you know, we would share music,” she said. “That had to happen first.”
Stapleton made a really valuable personal contribution. It was more than simply hip-hop, she remembered. I used to get a kick out of unearthing strange finds, such as covers of artists I really liked, like Radiohead. I adored Luda at the time. Like, like, LOVED. And OutKast, of course. “Bombs Over Baghdad” was the moment of eminence.
“How Music Got Free” featured a large portion of such music. Stapleton claimed, “It was a soundtrack to my life—and it was all pirated.”
She was drawn to the docuseries in part because of her passion for hip-hop. She was looking to work with the team once more after collaborating with LeBron James’ production company SpringHill on her 2018 docuseries, “Shut Up and Dribble,” when CEO Philip Byron brought Witt’s essay to her notice. “I became enthralled,” Stapleton recalled. “As in, right away.”
Bennie Lydell Glover, a former employee at a CD manufacturer in Shelby, North Carolina, is credited with being the driving force behind the direct delivery of some of the most well-known movies and music to fans’ computers.
Bennie Lydell Glover, a former employee at a CD facility in Shelby, North Carolina, is credited with being the driving force behind the direct delivery of some of the most well-known songs and movies to fans’ computers.PARAMOUNT+
After reading Witt’s 2016 book, which shares the same title as the documentary series, she began to generate ideas. The book is a comprehensive examination of the societal, industrial, and individual reasons that influenced the growth and decline of piracy.
“I loved reading a story where this Black guy from Shelby, North Carolina was at the center of it as a Black Southerner,” Stapleton remarked. “And the story was in hip-hop.”
Certainly, one of the most captivating aspects of Witt’s narrative, as well as Stapleton’s adaptation of it, is Bennie Lydell Glover, a Black employee of a CD plant from the small town of Shelby who is by all means an average person.
Glover started sneaking music out of the factory to a pirate network that operated covertly online in the 1990s. Soon, he was earning more money from that than from his full-time employment there, and he was able to establish his network of film and music piracy.
However, Glover was charged with one count of felony conspiracy to commit copyright infringement at the end of the 2000s, during which he served three months in federal prison, as part of a stepped-up crackdown on piracy.
Stapleton overcame several obstacles when filming during the epidemic in 2021 and traveled to Shelby for interviews with Glover, who comes across as so affable even on camera that everyone knows him as just Dell, regardless of their relationship with him.
The filmmaker gained enough confidence in Glover with the help of Witt, who is also featured in the series, to be able to help her secure interviews with locals who were relevant to the story, such as other factory workers at the time.
Dell was transparent, Stapleton informed me.
After “How Music Got Free” had its international premiere on March 9 at Austin, Texas’s Stateside Theater as part of the SXSW Conference and Festival, Dell Glover participated in a Q&A session.
Following the international premiere of “How Music Got Free” on March 9 at Austin, Texas’s Stateside Theater as part of the SXSW Conference and Festival, Dell Glover participates in a Q&A session. DANIEL BOCZARSKI VIA GETTY IMAGES
Stapleton’s “How Music Got Free,” which uses Witt’s work as its canvas, does a fantastic job of highlighting Glover’s extraordinary hustle and the banality of his life.
According to Stapleton, “he wanted to provide for his family like most Americans want to.” And he was endowed with the ability to recognize opportunities. That becoming an entrepreneur is very American. Then he was caught—I mean, this was the worst possible time to be caught for a crime of this nature.”
Not that there’s ever a good time to be found guilty of a federal offense, but as Stapleton put it, “No one understood.”
As more information about the internet and piracy became accessible to them, even the investigators interviewed for the documentary struggled to make sense of the rules that were being enacted in real-time.
Because of Stapleton’s evident empathy for Glover and the work he did to provide the foundation, Glover’s tale forms the core of “How Music Got Free” and persuasively illustrates the function racism plays in the legal system.
According to his reflections in Witt’s article, this is a southern Black man with subpar legal representation going up against multimillion-dollar, primarily white-owned enterprises, and with mostly white accomplices who frequently have greater financial privilege. Glover had little chance of winning.
“He had no access in the real world,” Stapleton remarked. However, he was the master creator of access to the internet. And I believe that that contains something.
After considering that for a while, she asked, “How is he any different than Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Paul Allen?”
Stapleton contends that whereas computer billionaires like Steve Jobs (seen above) are hailed as trailblazers, Dell Glover and other pirates who helped validate his technologies are now embroiled in legal disputes.
Stapleton contends that whereas computer billionaires like Steve Jobs (seen here) are hailed as trailblazers, Dell Glover and other pirates who helped validate his technology are now embroiled in legal matters. JOHN G. Via GETTY IMAGES, MABANGLO
Those white individuals, along with Steve Jobs, whom Stapleton also names, are acknowledged as technological trailblazers, even beyond the apparent racial divide. Glover is not, even in light of current knowledge.
For her, the job parallel is crucial. The director admits that he was innovative. However, she added, “What he created was a gateway drug for people.” “It was only successful because of piracy, an illegal activity.”
You make a valid point. When iTunes and the iPod were released in 2001, the majority of iPod owners loaded their devices with illegal music.
She went on, saying it’s not a jab at Apple, saying “I find it crazy that he put a ‘don’t download’ sticker on it, and that made it OK.” “It’s more like, let’s look at the inverse negative part of this, which is that the guys who went to federal prison all demonstrated that the technology worked and helped you make money.”
Because so much of Stapleton’s insightful analysis is absent from the documentary series, it stands out in particular. Although it is implied, no voice puts this into such a clear context.
The filmmaker acknowledged that had she had more time to work on the movie, “there were so many other worlds that I would have wanted to explore and to have gotten into,” but the more subtly critical look at racism and race in “How Music Got Free” is deliberate.
According to Stapleton, “I’m going to tell you what I mean in some of my past work.” “Such as ‘Shut Up and Dribble’ or ‘Hello, Privilege,’ my film about white privilege. It’s Chelsea here. A few choose to take a seat for that. Many people won’t see the movie since they only consider the title.
True enough.
At the time, all pirates were men, as “How Music Got Free” illustrates. White people made up the majority of them. Glover was an outlier.
At the time, all pirates were men, as “How Music Got Free” illustrates. White people made up the majority of them. Glover was an outlier. + PARAMOUNT+
“When you look at this one, I thought it’s very in your face,” she said. “All I wanted was for people to come meet Dell at his location. I desired to have faith in the viewers.
On a related note about the significance of race, “How I Got Free” does acknowledge that Black and/or hip-hop musicians were disproportionately affected by a significant amount of pirated music.
That has a lot to do with the fact that hip-hop, which dominated Universal and Interscope’s catalogs, had a lot of crossover demand, especially from young, white guys in the middle of America. Universal and Interscope were at the height of their popularity at the time. The majority of pirates also belong to such a demographic.
Stapleton stated that she had intended to explore this topic further in the series, but Witt’s book goes a little bit further into the hip-hop aspect of this tale and the impact of Universal and Interscope at the time. But she gave me a little more context for all of it.
“Printing Universal CDs was, for the most part, what kept the lights on at the plant, which is why the world got so many leaks that were related to hip-hop,” she said. “And particularly, that’s where all of Interscope’s artists were printed.”
This coincided with the explosion of West Coast hip-hop, particularly with Dr. Dre.
She agreed with my prior observation, saying, “The rise in ’92, ’93, when Dre put out ‘The Chronic,’ that was kind of the first album that white kids started to listen to in suburbia.” But it just grew larger and more bizarre. The sums were absurd.
Around the same time that West Coast hip-hop, and Dr. Dre in particular, was exploding, Stapleton said, “The reason why the world got so many leaks that were hip-hop-related was because what kept the lights on at the plant, for the most part, was printing Universal CDs.”
This was also the period when West Coast hip-hop, and Dr. Dre in particular, blew up, according to Stapleton, who said, “The reason why the world got so many leaks that were hip-hop-related was because what kept the lights on at the plant, for the most part, was printing Universal CDs.”MARK PETERSON VIA GETTY IMAGES
Even though archive footage and interviews with artists revealed that none of them was happy about their music being stolen, artists such as 50 Cent, Eminem, and Tupac were more successful than ever.
If there hadn’t been a market for the music, Stapleton claimed, “the piracy wouldn’t have succeeded.”
Yes, but as Eminem states in the series, there are a lot of people who need to be paid off for just one album after him. In the game of piracy, an entire team of creatives was disregarded.
Timbaland, 50 Cent, and Eminem all discuss taking extreme measures because they are afraid that someone may have been working with or befriending a mole. Eminem even said that his staff disguised their CDs while they were still in production.
In the meantime, record labels were making frequent attempts to combat leaks and piracy.
Stapleton stated, “I think it was a financial thing.” But from an artistic standpoint, I believe it hurt. I can’t fathom that my films will be distributed in rough-cut form. It would make me feel ashamed. I can thus comprehend. I believe that the discussion started to become rather one-sided.”
So let’s dissect that.
She went on, “Back when Napster was first around and Shawn Fanning was its founder, and all that, it was just like, artists who make too much money are bad, kids who download music are good.” “It was much more complicated than that, even though I will support kids downloading music until the cows come home.”
One of the most leaked musicians of the period, Eminem, is a producer and is interviewed for “How Music Got Free.”
Eminem, a highly leaked musician at the time, is a producer and is featured in an interview in “How Music Got Free.”PARAMOUNT+
“Because we could have potentially figured out some new shit, but nobody wanted to have that conversation,” she said, arguing that would have been the ideal time to have a more in-depth discussion about what was going on and what needed to happen.
Thus, in the end, “How Music Got Free” defends pirates and piracy. What is the opinion of those interviewed, such as Eminem, who serves as a producer for the show, about that?
Stapleton answered, “He would have to answer that question in the end.” However, I believe that every artist realizes, “Damn if only we had known what the fuck was going on.” The majority were so fixated on the idea that it was someone in the studio, someone close to them, and were freaking out.
Stapleton could understand Eminem’s annoyance because he was one of the most leaked artists at the time. As the plot of the series develops, the artists who were interviewed experience a wide range of emotions.
Stapleton stated, “I think it’s cool and interesting that Eminem kind of owns up and doesn’t try to switch the narrative.” “It was crucial to demonstrate how uncool he was about leaks and piracy.”
That is accurate. Even with the rapid evolution of at-home technology, the interaction between consumers, artists, and corporations in the entertainment business remains a challenge. These days, it seems like a new story worrying about the low attendance at movie theaters comes out every day.
In the meanwhile, a single ticket costs about $20 on average, and the movie will probably be available on streaming services in a month. or stolen so you may view it for free somewhere.
Speaking at a presentation at the yearly observatory on piracy on September 11, 2023, at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, is Miquel Iceta, the minister of culture and sport for Spain at the time.
On September 11, 2023, at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, Spain’s Minister of Culture and Sport, Miquel Iceta, makes a presentation. EUROPA PRESS NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES
Stapleton is aware of how all of that fits into the discussion of customer access.
“I believe that the film industry is likely going through a significant reckoning, because of technology, everything we learned from COVID, and all the things we can accomplish remotely without requiring human interaction,” the speaker stated.
After giving it some more thinking, she said, “It’s not even so much the streamers right now.” Even other production businesses operate under this status quo. All they want is to stay the same.
She explained that her goal with “How Music Got Free” is to emphasize that while change is still unavoidable, it may still be advantageous and feasible.
“You can either join the program and try to figure it out, or you can resist and lose out when you come to a fork in the road where technology meets art, meets how we receive product,” the speaker stated. “There is still a fallout period in the music industry. Nothing will ever be the same as it was.
“And I think that’s good and bad, for artists,” Stapleton continued.
Yes, since nobody likes to lose money on a gamble, not even the artists.
Yes, without a doubt, she replied. What will be intriguing, in my opinion, is if these industries will realize they can still turn a profit. We won’t make enormous profits as that isn’t sustainable. How then can we continue to produce things?'”
Several artists who were interviewed for “How Music Got Free” include 50 Cent, who is still struggling with the complex repercussions of piracy.
Several musicians who were interviewed for “How Music Got Free” include 50 Cent, who is still struggling with the complex repercussions of piracy.PARAMOUNT+
That is an important query.
“I believe that the majority of artists, whether they are filmmakers, musicians, or writers, want to be compensated for their labors,” Stapleton went on. “In order to provide for our families or ourselves, and to put food on the table.”
Naturally.
She continued, “We want people to be able to access what we make.” And I believe that I have all of these queries. How can we all appreciate art in a way that is both equitable and commercially feasible, yet still prevents artists from becoming the stereotypical starving artist who lives a life of poverty?”
Even for Stapleton, the answer to that is still evasive. Or maybe disregarded, similar to how piracy’s unrealized promise was in Glover’s day. It forces you to sit with it, “How Music Got Free.”
“We probably will be missing out on some really interesting and out-of-the-box solutions if we’re just having a conversation in an echo chamber with Silicon Valley and the huge corporations and the richest artists of all time,” Stapleton stated.
