The first widespread music delivery technology to emanate from outside industry control, mp3s, flowing through peer-to-peer networks and other pathways hidden in plain sight, have performed the radical task of separating music from the music industry for the first time in a century.
They have facilitated the rise of an enormous pirate infrastructure; ideologically separate from the established one, but feeding off its products, multiplying and distributing them freely, without following the century-old rules of capitalist exchange.
Capitalism hasn't gone away, of course, but mp3s have severely threatened its habits and rituals within music culture.
(Available as a .pdf for anyone who wants to print it out.)
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