1999: The Year the Record Industry Lost Control

By Eamonn Forde

It was supposed to be just another bumper year for the record business. The industry was firing on all cylinders and growing exponentially; CD was king and bringing in phenomenal sums of money. The good times, culturally and financially, were rolling.
Yet by December 1999, at the dawn of the new millennium, a bomb had been set squarely under the core business – the arrival of digital as we know it today.

The story of 1999 is one of control: who had it, who lost it and who wanted more. It was a year of chaos for an industry that had shaped the 20th century, had grown complacent and was quickly having to adapt to a very different and an infinitely less certain future. It was one of the most pivotal, lucrative, exciting and turbulent years the record business has ever experienced.

And this is how it happened.

Eamonn Forde rakes through the rubble to tell us what happened, how it happened and how it is still affecting us today.

'Well-researched and persuasively argued.... A timely survey of events whose consequences are still being felt.' MOJO

'Fascinating in its level of detail... plenty of food for thought' Record Collector, 4****

Eamonn Forde is a freelance music business and technology journalist and has written about all areas of the music industry since 2001. His books with Omnibus Press include The Final Days of EMI: Selling the Pig and Leaving the Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates.

Publication Date: 07.03.2024
ISBN: 9781913172770
Extent: 576 pages
Format: Hardback

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