the compression algorithm could target different output sizes Technically, Brandenburg’s algorithm made multiple passes on the source audio until the desired bit rate was achieved. With each pass the information was simplified, and fewer bits were used. A 128-kbps mp3 took more passes to create than a 256-kbps mp3, and thus its audio quality was lower.

Johnston was the Newton to Brandenburg’s Leibniz Like Newton, Johnston claimed he had got there first and, with a somewhat churlish touch, would tell of a public presentation he’d given in Toronto in 1984 in which he’d outlined concepts in perceptual coding that predated Brandenburg’s work by nearly two years. But AT&T hadn’t understood the value of Johnston’s research, and Brandenburg had filed his patent first.

MPEG . . . decides which technology makes it to the consumer marketplace MPEG is perhaps the world’s strangest standardization committee. Its continued existence depends almost entirely on the work of a single person: an eccentric Italian engineer by the name of Leonardo Chiariglione. Despite volunteering more than 10,000 hours of his life managing the organization for the last 25 years, Chiariglione lays claim to none of its patents and has never earned any money for his work. He describes his motivation in almost metaphysical terms: “MPEG is the bridge between the human and the rest of the world.”

The Stockholm contest was to be graded A technical description of the format and results of the Stockholm contest can be found in “MPEG/Audio Subjective Assessments Test Report,” International Organization for Standardization, 1990.

MPEG approached Fraunhofer with a compromise In addition to the MPEG deal, Fraunhofer made engineering concessions to please Thomson and AT&T. The final piece of technology took a variety of sound-sampling and compression methods and bound them together with the computing equivalent of masking tape. James Johnston, who despite his grumpy, plainspoken manner, was careful never to swear, thus described the mp3 as “A hybrid. Or maybe an impolite word for an illegitimate child.”

better known today as the mp3 The name “mp3” was not widely used until the introduction of Windows 95. During the period after the MPEG announcement, the mp3 was referred to as “Layer 3.” Although anachronistic, from here on I refer to it as the mp3 for clarity.

like a detour around a car crash See, for example, Karlheinz Brandenburg, “MP3 and AAC Explained,” paper presented at the AES 17th International Conference on High Quality Audio Coding, Signa, Italy, September 2–5, 1999.

voted to abandon the mp3 forever The final official decision of the European Digital Audio Broadcasting standard was filed May 1995.

CHAPTER 2

PolyGram compact disc manufacturing plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina The property lot of the plant is technically in Grover, North Carolina. However, all of the former plant employees I spoke with referred to it only as the Kings Mountain plant.

first ever automobile factory outside of Germany BMW had manufactured parts outside of Germany before, but the Spartanburg plant was the first complete production line.

property values plummeted, following a predictable pattern of racial segregation Author’s impressions, confirmed by real estate website Zillow.

CHAPTER 3

company car, a personal chauffeur . . . ten million dollars Mark Landler, “The Perks of a Music Man,” New York Times, July 10, 1995.

more Bobby Darin than Bob Dylan Chuck Philips, “Universal Music Chief’s Winding Comeback Trail,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1999. Morris’ quote reads: “Yeah. I was like a cross between Neil Sedaka and Bobby Darin. It sounds pretty wimpish now, but that’s what was happening in 1962.”

Ertegun was a legend For the classic treatment of Ertegun, see George W. S. Trow, “Eclectic, Reminiscent, Amused, Fickle, Perverse,” New Yorker, May 29 and June 5, 1978.

a bonus of a million dollars Robert Greenfield, The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 313.

long-standing ties to organized crime For more on this, see Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (New York: Vintage, 1990).

“We’re going to make more hits.” Morris interview. He has been telling this anecdote for years. See also Greenfield, Last Sultan, 313.

his appointment was regarded with skepticism See, for example, James Bates, “Music Maven: Doug Morris Has Set the Tone for the Dinosaur-to-Diva Rise of Atlantic,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1994. Morris is described as “someone who cooled his heels for years before finally getting his chance.”

a daring corporate insurrection inside Time Warner For the full story, see Fredric Dannen, “Showdown at the Hit Factory,” New Yorker, November 21, 1994.

“Morris was like an old country lawyer.” Larry Kenswil, author interview.

all of Warner’s A&R men had passed on them From Marc Nathan, interviewed by Michael Laskow on the website of Taxi, an independent A&R company: “A&R had essentially passed on Hootie and the Blowfish, dismissing them really as just a bar band. But a research assistant . . . kept coming up with this band named Hootie and the Blowfish that was selling 50 to 100 pieces in virtually every store in the Carolinas. When the retail sheets were brought to Doug Morris, and Doug said, ‘What is this band Hootie and the Blowfish?’ A&R said, ‘Oh, it’s a bar band, and we passed on them.’ Doug essentially said, ‘Well, get someone to un-pass right away because this is the real deal.’”

“Yeah, but to us, you’re the Michael Jordan of baseball.” Fred Goodman, Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 79. Goodman has Danny Goldberg originally making the crack as a quiet aside, then Iovine repeating it aloud. He cites Iovine as a source.

Henry Luce III . . . was seen applauding Steve Knopper, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age (New York: Free Press, 2009), 61.

“I would ask the executives of Time Warner a question . . .” Bob Dole, “Dole Campaign Speech,” C-SPAN video, May 31, 1995.

a black-and-white party shot of himself, dwarfed by Suge and Snoop Morris still has this picture. It now rests on his coffee table at Sony.

CHAPTER 4

a guy named Steve Church Church passed away after a battle with brain cancer in 2012. He was 56 years old. In a tribute page on Telos’ website, he was warmly remembered by friends, family, and colleagues.

L3Enc . . . consumers would create their own mp3 files L3Enc used a DOS-based command line interface. A typical command from 1995 might read:

l3enc track_10.wav ironic.mp3 -br 128000

This tells Brandenburg’s algorithm to compress Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” to 128,000 bits per second.

12 compact discs . . . to one It didn’t have to be a CD. Brandenburg’s algorithm could handle any audio source.

Thomson SA Today known as Technicolor SA.

an engineer to jerry-rig . . . the world’s first handheld mp3 player Robert Friedrich, a Fraunhofer hardware expert, built the device.

in late 1995 . . . a spiky red starburst shouted, NEU! The earliest snapshot of this website on the Internet Archive is dated to August 1996. Grill believes that earlier pages looked similar.

please send 85 deutsche marks From the readme.txt file accompanying early versions of L3Enc.

CHAPTER 5