To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Technology March 23, 2000 URL: http://www.salon.com/tech/books/2000/03/23/mp3 "Beyond the Charts" Bruce Haring sets out to tell the amazing story of how the MP3 movement turned the recording industry on its head, but misses the beat. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Janelle Brown Of all the paradigm-shifting sagas that have emerged in the past few years, the MP3 movement is one of the most interesting. Here we have an innocuous little music format that has launched a hundred lawsuits, buoyed little-known musicians into stardom, made music-loving geeks into millionaires and turned one of the most lucrative industries in America on its head. The rise of MP3 is a story that should make a terrific book -- a chance to show the impact this movement could have on issues like freedom of speech, notions of ownership and copyright, artist empowerment and the decentralization of power in the music industry. So when I heard about the new title by USA Today high-tech reporter Bruce Haring, called "Beyond the Charts," -- the first book to attempt to document the ongoing drama of the MP3 movement -- I couldn't wait to read it. Unfortunately, this isn't that book. There is a certain futility in trying to document a movement that is still history in the making, and if one thing is certain, the fallout of the "MP3 revolution" is barely getting started. But while other authors have cleared this hurdle -- books are written about the Internet all the time -- Haring doesn't get beyond the frantic pace of the facts and into the more thoughtful realm of ideas. At a brief 165 pages -- of which fully 22 pages are a reprint of a speech by Electric Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow -- "Beyond the Charts" feels more like an extended essay than a book. In fact, it reads most like an especially long version of a newspaper article: a kind of added-value collection of the features you might have already seen in the countless publications that cover the MP3 movement. If you're looking for facts about what's happened so far, this is the book for you. If you're looking for deep insights, though, keep waiting -- Haring has few. "Beyond the Charts" opens with a gleeful Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3.com, landing an $11 million round of financing, and closes with the MP3 Summit of the summer of 1999. In between, Haring documents the rise of the music format that materialized in 1997, sparked the imaginations of impoverished music fans around the world and has caused the record industry headaches ever since. By focusing primarily on the major players and seminal moments -- from the invention of the MP3 technology, to the creation of SDMI, to the IUMA's first downloadable tunes, to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawsuit against Diamond Multimedia and its Rio MP3 player, and pretty much every battle waged by the RIAA -- the book will at least satisfy the cravings of those who want an account of every twist and turn of the MP3 movement. Haring spends much of his book profiling the mercurial Robertson -- documenting gratifying details like the fact that Robertson owns a mere six CDs and got exactly one downloadable song out of the multimillion-dollar deal he signed with Alanis Morissette. Haring devotes a few pages to WinAmp programmer Justin Frankel, a few more pages to digital music pundit Jim Griffin's early days inside Geffen Records and a large chunk of the book to the logistics of compression technology and the legal decisions that allowed the Recording Industry Association of America to pursue its online foes. Yet despite these interesting details, Haring's overall insights are few and far between. The book feels as if it were hastily assembled, produced through a quick culling of Haring's notes from industry conferences and a few in-depth interviews with the bigger players. Haring's strong suit is not his writing; there are plenty of clunkers, like, "The traditional record industry still felt they had a slam dunk case. They would soon learn that the new school was in the house." But he does show a firm knowledge of the history of the record industry and its voracious appetite for profits. This is a history that Haring previously addressed in another book, "Off the Charts," and perhaps "Beyond the Charts" works best as a kind of addendum to the earlier title. The slim volume offers only a scant look into the rich complications of the record-industry history that has informed the MP3 revolution as we know it; the book begs for a closer reading of some of the horrific deal making that has kept artists and fans up in arms for decades. New York Times music critic Neil Strauss, for example, has done a terrific job in feature articles of diving into the world of disgruntled musicians; Haring's book would have benefited from a similar study of the creative side of the record industry. What about comparing the MP3 movement with similar online revolutions, like the open source movement? Or examining the fans who are latching onto digital music? Haring's book might have offered a closer look at the subcultures, such as techno musicians, that have driven the MP3 movement or provided predictions about what impact the MP3 world might have in the future. Unfortunately, Haring instead focuses primarily on the digital music entrepreneurs and record industry executives: a boatful of self-important men with CEO titles, and one woman -- the beleaguered Hilary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA. Despite their importance in the deal making, these folks don't offer much color. "Beyond the Charts" does do a decent job of documenting the biggest players in the scene -- at least, the players that existed as of November 1999, when the book entered its editing cycle. But, of course, things have changed substantially since then, as they always do in this industry. In fact, some of the most momentous upheavals in the digital music industry have happened since his book was finished six months ago: the rise of Napster and Gnutella, the Time Warner/AOL deal that will pull Warner Music and EMI under AOL's purvey, MP3.com's multiple lawsuits with the RIAA, Listen.com's partnership with all six of the major labels, the "Internet music broadcaster" WWW.com coming out with the first online licensing deal with the RIAA and the advent of MP3 players in everything from your car to your PDA. Haring, for example, unquestioningly cites an apparently seminal moment when the RIAA's Rosen, speaking before a crowd at the Jupiter Plug.In conference, states that "piracy ... is really not a significant concern" for the RIAA anymore. Although Haring cites this as a "stunning" moment that seemed to mark the end of the RIAA's single-minded pursuit of online music pirates, the RIAA's actions in the months since his book was published show that Rosen did not live by her words. In late December, the RIAA sued Napster for around $20 billion -- $100,000 for every song that was "pirated" on the service -- as perhaps the group's firmest anti-piracy action yet. Ultimately, Haring doesn't seem to have much to add to the rafts of magazine articles and newspaper profiles that have already documented every step of the MP3 revolution -- other than to assemble all the data in one place. In fact, the most insightful pages of his book are the ones he didn't even write: the 22 reprinted pages of Barlow's thoughtful speech, offered up as a call to arms at the MP3 Summit last year. "We are dealing with a cultural battle here between the forces of the individual and his or her ability to do with his or her mind as they see fit, whether it be entertaining with music or other things," Barlow explains, "and it's also a battle about culture and the culture of institutions, particularly industrial institutions and the individuals of the years to come." And that, I'm sure, will be a subject for another book in the years to come, too. Undoubtedly other music journalists are diligently working on books about the same topic: If the publishing industry of recent years has shown us anything, it's that every twist of the digital revolution will produce at least a shelf of books. The MP3 revolution, rest assured, will be no exception. salon.com | March 23, 2000   - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Janelle Brown is a senior writer for Salon Technology.