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How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back
Doubleday
November 2011
On Sale: October 25, 2011
320 pages ISBN: 0385533764 EAN: 9780385533768 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
How did the newspaper, music, and film industries go from
raking in big bucks to scooping up digital dimes? Their
customers were lured away by the free ride of technology.
Now, business journalist Robert Levine shows how they can
get back on track. On the Internet, “information wants to be free.” This
memorable phrase shaped the online business model, but it is
now driving the media companies on whom the digital industry
feeds out of business. Today, newspaper stocks have fallen
to all-time lows as papers are pressured to give away
content, music sales have fallen by more than half since
file sharing became common, TV ratings are plummeting as
viewership migrates online, and publishers face off against
Amazon over the price of digital books. In Free Ride, Robert Levine narrates an epic tale of value
destruction that moves from the corridors of Congress, where
the law was passed that legalized YouTube, to the dorm room
of Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster; from the
bargain-pricing dramas involving iTunes and Kindle to
Google’s fateful decision to digitize first and ask
questions later. Levine charts how the media industry lost
control of its destiny and suggests innovative ways it can
resist the pull of zero. Fearless in its reporting and analysis, Free Ride is the
business history of the decade and a much-needed call to
action.
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