Ohio and Michigan put their rivalry aside as Detroit's Eminem and Akron's LeBron James team up to make a music piracy documentary for Paramount+.
The two-part series premiered at SXSW earlier this year and “details the fascinating, and often funny, inside story of the technology-driven disruption that changed music in the late '90s and early 2000s,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. The paper examines the technology that has enabled millions of young people to quench their thirst for new music simply by downloading it for free.
How music became free features interviews with Em (who hilariously thought Yahoo! was a person), record label Steve Stoute (who also serves as executive producer), 50 Cent, Timbaland, Jimmy Iovine, Rocsi Diaz, and Rhymefest, among others. They also talk to Dell Glover, who is often referred to as “Patient Zero Internet Piracybecause he was one of the first factory workers to smuggle CDs out of a manufacturing plant.
Alexandria Stapleton directs the doc, which is produced by Warner Bros. Unscripted Television, LeBron's SpringHill, Interscope Films and Shady Films.
The director said of her approach: “As a filmmaker, I wanted to challenge the narrow prism of who we consider technology innovators. How music became free is a story that proves brilliant minds can be found in unlikely places, like the rural, forgotten factory town of Shelby, North Carolina.”
There is also a book of the same name published in 2015 by Stephen Witt if you want to do your own research before the paper comes out on Tuesday, June 11th. There is still time.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/culture/tv-film/eminem-lebron-james-documentary-how-music-got-free-trailer-1235690430/