![How Music Got Free Director & Producer Break Down Method Man-Narrated Piracy Documentary [SXSW]](https://i.headtopics.com/images/2024/3/16/screenrant/how-music-got-free-director-producer-break-down-me-how-music-got-free-director-producer-break-down-me-6E48466B5CDF28F8AED576EDE433D37F.webp)
Valerie is a writer at MovieWeb and Screen Rant, Host of the Pop a la Carte Podcast, and former Managing Editor of the late lamented WithAnAccent.com.
Summary How Music Got Free is a new documentary making its debut at 2024's South By Southwest festival. Director Alexandria Stapleton works from the 2015 book by journalist Stephen Witt on the digital revolution of the 1990s, when music piracy was at its peak. The project explores the clash between the classic physical distribution model and the move to digital media sometimes known as the third industrial revolution.
Stephen Witt: Yeah, well, I had pirated a ton of music. I just had a ton of music - like 10,000 albums on my hard drives. This was before the cloud, and I was like, "How did all this get here? What is an mp3? How is this possible? What happened?" And as I researched it, I realized almost no one had an answer.
I read the book and fell in love with it. I remember reading the book, and I didn't even have the gig yet, but I was taking notes of things like, "I want to know more about this person." And it was just so exciting because it was like a thriller, but no one knows that they're in the thriller. Then I met Stephen and we got along really well. Then we started the five-year journey of making this project. I'm excited to be here and to finally be sharing it with the world.
I think just knowing that, hearing stories about record execs being shoved into a room after the Grammys, and the head of the RAA Hilary Rosen telling them, "Guys, we have a problem. This is really serious. There's this thing called Napster, and all the kids are on it." Name a song, any song, and she could play it right there. And execs were like, "Cool. Okay, I'm hungry. Are we going to lunch now?" And just totally ignoring that when it was the end.
Stephen Witt: The racks of CDs at the mall? To the record executives, that was inventory. That was valuable inventory. But to the engineers into the pirates, it was just data, and they only needed one to reproduce it a million times across the planet. The record industry just wouldn't build it, so these kids built it for them.
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