Recent developments in music industry

I have chosen music industry and the Internet to research.
This article, on the Guardian website, shows the developments that bands are choosing to make in order to make sure they are up to date with current technologies and therefor make the most money. another article that relates to this is:-stars compose new ways to use music.

apple have introduced a new service called "complete my album". this allows customers to download an album for a cheaper price than previously. this move has been encouraged for a long time. this shows that even new developments such as downloading can constantly be further improved.

illegal downloads
"Illegal music download sites will never be eradicated", the president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has admitted. "the music industry is convinced illegal music downloads are having a detrimental effect on record sales."

The scale of the problem is huge - in 2001 IFPI and affiliated national groups were responsible for the removal of:
1,060 unauthorised servers
28,000 pirate web and music sites
700 million unauthorised music files

"In the US there are a handful of legitimate offerings but in Europe there are almost no real legitimate forms available."

however, free music downloads, whether illegal or legal, will always be more popular than having to pay for legal downloads.

iphone

Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone and Apple TV (a device to stream music and movies from a computer to the living room) at the annual Mac world Expo in San Francisco.

the phone has no conventional buttons and instead uses as large touch screen.

the touch keyboard is available for text messaging and there is a built-in two mega pixel camera.

the iPhone is an example of convergence technology. it combines music and mobile phone technology to create a state of the art phone with touch screen technology.

Steve Jobs -

"the iPhone is literally 5 years ahead of any other mobile phone"

"the touch pad ignores unintended touches. It's super-smart"

"the iPod changed everything in 2001. We're goin to do it again in 2007"

there are two version of the iPhone available, one with 4GB storage space and the other with 8GB.

5 Areas of Study

Technology
-understand what the technology allows audiences and institutions to do that they couldn’t do before.
-what is the chosen technology?
-how is it marketed? Who to?
-which companies provide it? How much does it cost
-hot/cold media? Push/pull technology?
-is it a new media, or an old media that is undergoing radical transformation?
-who is responsible for developing it? Why?

Institutions
-find evidence of new media technologies allowing institutions to work in new ways, reach their audience in new ways, make greater profit etc.
-research issues in the business pages and broadsheet newspapers.
-How are they constructing marketing campaigns to launch new products?
-are they reacting to audience demands or having to educate users?
-issues of privacy, financial losses

Audience
-what are audiences not doing so they can spend more time interacting with new media technologies?
-how is the technology consumed?
-who by?
-advantages for the consumer; convergence, interactivity, quality, choice, control
-counter arguments; information rich/poor, cultural imperialism, piracy, surveillance, fragmented society.

Issues
-encourage illegal activity?
-increased spending?
-harm children?
-will shops close or people lose jobs as a result?
-is it generating any moral panics?

The future
-What could happen if the technology is extended?
-How could media practices be different in the future, based on the potential of current technologies?

The future of blogging

www.robinsloan.com/epic

this video raises the following debates:-

• Google chooses and presents the news by using a computer. Moral debate?
• copyright? who would be responsible?
• this could lead to custom content packages. this means your actions on the Internet are monitored and you would be provided with news which the computer feels you are most interested in. this would mean that if you use the Internet regularly and look at many different subject areas then you will be provided with a good spectrum of news. however, many people only use the Internet occasionally and only for trivial needs. for example downloading music and talking to friends then you won't be provided with all events occurring in the world. even though these mite be important to you if you were informed of them.

Bloggers and journalism

John Naughton - Writers who work for nothing: it's a licence to print money.
In recent years, there has been a rise in the use of user generated content. This involves members of the public sending pictures of events, such as the July 7th bombings in London, to networks such as the BBC. Without developments such as camera phones and e-mail this would not be possible. Researchers have predicted that by 2010 more than 70% of digital content in the world will have been created by consumers.
Those employed in mainstream media ask:-

• what will support this?
• who will pay for the bandwidth needed to host the 100 million video streams YouTube provides every day?

Before the development of user-generated content consumers didn't create media and only consumed.

Nick Carr "one of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the few. It's a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socialising, not in making money, and besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. It's only by aggregating those contributions on a massive scale - on a web scale - that the business becomes lucrative."

Emily Bell - We're all reporters in the digital democracy

Previously, the public's contribution to the media has been limited to items such as letter's pages in newspapers.

the speed, volume and type of response that has been made possible by the Internet, broadband media and digitised media has changed in recent years contributing to the increase in user-generated content in the media.

even since the terror attacks on september 11th 2001, the way news is reported has changed dramatically due to the public become so much more involved in the way news in reported. this is shown by reports of the july 7th bombings and the tsunami on boxing day 2004.