Steve Knopper

The digital frontier is the obvious next step in the evolution of music dissemination, but hubris appears to be driving the big labels out of business. The executives in charge, in Knopper’s account, come off as highly literary—as flawed as Faulkner’s characters, as pushy as Tom Clancy’s best, and generally, as a cast and crew, dramatic on a Shakespearean level.

Knopper gives us the meticulous research of a college textbook, but his fast-paced style is direct and humorous. He allows his subjects and their shenanigans to speak for themselves, offering open confessions that detail why the music industry’s karmic chickens, bred now for decades, are coming home to roost.