‘When Napster first came about, I didn’t understand the internet yet…’
I distinctly remember being 13 years old round at my friend’s house and his older brother told me about some software called Napster that was able to download any song ever made for free. At first, this blew my mind. I was still paying £10-£15 for a CD at that time and so buying music was a special occasion reserved for birthdays and Christmas. The thought of having the whole history of recorded music available at the push of a button seemed like an insane prospect. Sure enough, a year or so later when my parents finally got the internet, the first thing I did on my massive desktop computer was to install Napster. I still remember the first song I downloaded (‘Celebrity Skin’ by Hole). And I still remember the mixture of guilty excitement and exhilarating transgressiveness. It felt like something that shouldn’t be allowed. How Music Got Free goes some way to explaining how the music industry changed forever due to a few nerds and some factory employees…
Based on Stephen Witt’s 2015 book of the same name, this Paramount+ two-parter explores the origin of peer-to-peer technology and the rise and fall of file-sharing sites like Napster and Limewire. Director Alex Stapleton also acknowledges the importance of the iPod in the story of filesharing but stops short in examining the creation of Spotify and the effect that the streaming behemoth has had on the record industry. As Eminem serves as a producer on How Music Got Free, we are treated to several interviews with many of his immediate posse (Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Timbaland, Jimmy Iovine, etc) and while it is fascinating to hear a first-hand account of the sheer panic that coursed through Interscope Records when albums started being leaked, it would have been nice to hear from other areas of the music industry too.
How Music Got Free is competently directed and always compelling but there is a nagging feeling that it only ever scratches the surface of what is hot button issue. Giving away music for free not only affects the music industry but art in general and the ripple effect of peer-to-peer filesharing is still very much being felt today. This documentary only ever feels like half the story.