Music journalist Stephen Witt joins us this morning to tell us the story of how piracy took down the music industry. His new book is How Music Got Free.
Witt introduces us to the greatest pirate in history that no one has ever heard of, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store.
Even today, how music should be paid for (if at all) is under constant debate, and streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, and now Tidal are continually jockeying for a place in the music consumer market.
