Hacker Cinema
System Shock
2018 · Film · documentary · 54 min
Directed by Jed Rosenberg
Germany 1995, a PhD student makes a technological breakthrough when he discovers how to compress audio without losing sound quality. He calls his new file type an "MP3". Within just a few years, and with the help of a nascent tech community, illegal MP3s begin filling up the hard drives of millions of computers around the world. It's the beginning of our modern digital age and internet culture. Featuring interviews with infamous music executives, artists, and techies, System Shock chronicles how the MP3 crushed the music industry and gave rise to the billion-dollar sharing economy.
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Industry groups like RIAA obviously massively overstate their case when they claim every pirated mp3 is a lost sale, but Napster et al. did cost the music industry dearly.
If you look at a graph of music sales over time, you can see that the 1990s were a great time for the music business.[1] CDs brought in increasing revenue until the early 2000s, when they precipitously declined. Legal downloads did not make up for the decline in CD sales. Streaming eventually halted the decline, but revenue only stabilized around 2010-2015. In other words, the music industry had a really tough decade.
Of course, the music industry also has itself to blame. CDs were expensive, and who wants to pay $20 for an album that only has one song worth listening to? The industry only embraced downloads and streaming once they had no other choice.
There's a good documentary on this: System Shock.[2]
1. https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/files/2019/11/recorded_music_revenue_simplified3.png
2. https://vimeo.com/336427561