Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

Appetite for Self-Destruction examines how the recording industry built an empire on the compact disc in the 1980s and 1990s, then failed to adapt when digital distribution made the CD obsolete. Rolling Stone journalist Steve Knopper traces the decisions, denials, and eventual reckoning across three decades of excess and institutional blindness, drawing on interviews with hundreds of industry sources to construct a cautionary tale about disruption from the inside.

Dan John Miller narrates with a journalist's pace, keeping Knopper's anecdote-rich narrative moving without letting the music industry gossip overwhelm the structural argument. The account is both entertainment and economic history, and Miller's voice distinguishes between the two registers with sufficient clarity to serve both audiences.