I spent countless rapt hours taping my favorite songs off the radio when I was a kid. There were so many tunes, and I had so little money. (And if a motorcycle or a semi went blasting past the house as I taped, then a ballad like “Crimson and Clover” would get some gritty meat on its ethereal bones.)

But even back then, the record companies considered someone like me a sneak thief, a young blackguard. By taping, I was taking money out of their pockets, bread off the table and cocaine from the noses of their artists and executives.

That battle between customer and music company has only intensified since. The listener screams, “Love!” The music executive screams, “Theft!” And the musician — same as it ever was — screams, “Pay me!” Now Greg Kot, a music critic and co-host of a rock ’n’ roll radio talk show, tells us what happened in “Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music,” his well-reported book about music in the Internet Age.

“Ripped” ranges from the days when the record companies gnashed their teeth over the growth of home taping, to music publishers’ blunt attacks on sampling in hip-hop, to the life, death and canonization of Napster, to the iPod and beyond. It also examines the constant consolidation — in the music companies, in radio, in concert promotion — that helped lead to the industry’s implosion.