Steve Knopper - Appetite for Self-Destruction. The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age (2009 Simon & Schuster)

Do you remember Guns N’ Roses’ debut album called „Appetite for Destruction“ (1987)? It is the best selling debut in the history of the music industry. But I am not going to write about it. I only wanted to use the direct reference used in the title of Steve Knopper’s book.

Steve Knopper is a writer and journalist who has written for „Wired“, „Esquire“, „Spin“, „National Geographic Traveler“, „Billboard“, „Newsday“, „Details“, „Continental“, „Chicago Tribune“, „Chicago“, „New York“, „Rocky Mountain News“, „Entertainment Weekly“ and now he is a contributing editor at the legendary „Rolling Stone“. Steve started his career in 1989 as an obituary writer and concert reviewer for „The Richmond (Virginia) News Leader“, but has been taking up the music business since 2002.

This is the newest book on the music industry by Steve Knopper. He starts the story with a Chicago rock DJ, Steve Dahl who was the main character of the Disco Demolition Night on July 12th, 1979. Many people interpret it as an attempt at destroying the record industry in the late 70s. This figure was associated with disco haters connected with the baseball team Chicago White Sox. Steve Dahl now hosts a radio show every morning in Chicago on 104,3 JACK-FM.

Another interesting character, Steve Knopper writes about, is CBS’ chairman Walter Yetnikoff. He is a very important figure, especially for me, as he is of Polish origin and a man behind Michael Jackson’s „Thriller“ success. Moreover, Steve Knopper refers to the year 1981 when MTV was founded and black artists had problems to have their videoclips played in this medium.

You can ask: what do Philips and Sony and the Thomas Edison of the digital age, James T. Russell have to do with the beginning of CD and the duration of Ludwig van Beethoven’s „9th Symphony“? You should become engrossed in the book. Steve Knopper fascinatingly writes about bigwigs’ games and mergers worth billions. He describes the process of turning record labels into corporations that became creations going away far from music itself. Another shady and unethical pay-to-play business was so-called payola (labels paid radio stations for playing their artists on air to make hits). The author depicted many other phenomenons: boysband bubble, teen pop boom (1997-2001), growth of hip-hop popularity, suits brought by bands against labels and companies, the Napster era (hackers, „revenge of the single“), psychoacoustics, MP3 format, Suzanne Vega’s „Tom’s Dinner“, Napster’s supporters (Radiohead, Limp Bizkit, The Offspring) and its opponents (Metallica, Eminem), Steve Job’s iPod, rootkits on CDs, ringtones, 360-degree deal and so on.

This book made me aware of how much money was thrown down the drain by irresponsible people who worked in the record industry. The money could be used to pick up talented artists and get them powerful promotion. Unfortunately, record industry people didn’t make use of Napster’s potential and wasted the opportunity of changing their outdated business model based on the traditional distribution chains. Results were easy to predict. In 2007, thousands of people, who have worked in the music industry for many years, were fired and had problems to find their feet in completely new circumstances.

This book also forces to think over the future of the record industry. How will it look like in a few years? In my opinion, record labels can go toward two different directions: next mergers (which would set the monopoly of only two companies) or progressive divisions into specialty labels (taking up only selected genres). Another idea is a CD’s subscription system: people log-in into a given label’s website, oblige to buy a physical carrier, then the label presses a declared amount of CDs, send invoices to customers via e-mail, they pay and get CDs by mail. In such a course of events, only a few music stores would be ran in bigger cities and capitals worldwide, and the rest distribution would be taken care of via Internet. Record labels would compete with big concert agencies or try to take over them. There is also another futuristic scenario: only physical things would be paid (CDs, LPs, tickets, players, merchandise and so on), and digital music would be free and treated only as a way of online promotion. What scenario will come true? Time will tell and God only knows.

Summing up, „Appetite for Self-Destruction“ is the book beset with fascinating details. The author interstingly guides us through the stages of the 30-year history of the music industry. Steve, my Dear Professional Colleague, you did an axcellent job! This is top-notch writing and a must-have for all music professionals as well as crowds of curious onlookers.