Journalist Stephen Witt traces the history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet.

First published in the USA as: How music got free : the end of an industry, the turn of the century, and the Patient Zero of piracy. New York : Viking, 2015. Reprinted with new afterword (pages 267-276).