Hypothesis Questions

How has downloading increased/decreased over the past few years?

Why has this happened?

What is being done to stop illegal downloads?

Can artists make money from peer-to-peer sites such as Kasaa?

Is there a technophobic point-of-view?

Technology, Institutions, Audience etc.

Technology
What technology allows audiences and institutions to do that they couldn't do before. How is it marketed? Cost? Hot/cold media? Is it an old media undergoing changes?
Convergence: describes the process of multiple technologies brought together to form a new product.
Linear/Non-Linear: linear experiences that move in a straight line from start to finish (eg. watching a film at the cinema.) Non-linear experiences are when the audience has flexibility to choose their experience (eg. DVD features allow the audience to choose specific endings of events.)
Digitisation: the most basic form of digital material, made up of a long series of 1s and 0s.

Institutions
Establish how media institutions are converging media interests to increase sales and therefore profit.
Interactivity: is a two-way communication and in the context of NMTs means content that is reactive to the audience's choice. Eg. the red button & interactive TV.

Audience
What are audiences doing with their new media technologies? How are their experiences changing? What are audiences not doing so they can spend more time interacting with new media? Consider the counter arguements; information rich/poor, cultural imperialism, piracy, surveillance, fragmented society. Audience research will be carried out asking opinions and investigating consumption patterns.
Personalisation: the ability to offer users a personalised experience. Eg. Sky+ customers get to manipulate a linear experience into a non linear experience if they choose.
Linear/Non-Linear: linear experiences that move in a straight line from start to finish (eg. watching a film at the cinema.) Non-linear experiences are when the audience has flexibility to choose their experience (eg. DVD features allow the audience to choose specific endings of events.)

Issues
Does the new media technology encourage illegal activity, or increased spending, or harm children? Could it cause shops to close and therefore, people lose their jobs?
Democratisation: the ability to communicate your opinions and ideas or share your creative output. The digital divide shouldn’t be forgotten, however; not everyone has Internet access never mind a blog.

The Future
How could media practices be different in the future based on current practices?
Democratisation: the ability to communicate your opinions and ideas or share your creative output. The digital divide shouldn’t be forgotten, however; not everyone has Internet access never mind a blog.

CREATIVE

Another example of convergence:

http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/

Online Music & The UK Record Industry

> Does filesharing damage music sales?
> Where can I download legally?
> Frequently asked questions
> The UK's digital music timeline
> Filesharing information pack

HMV digital downloads

HMV rolled out its Windows-based digital song download service this week, going head to head with high street rival Virgin.
But is the service easy for the ordinary punter to understand? Have HMV and Microsoft banished the compatibility issues that have dogged the market to date? And have they laid the fears of digital activists about locked music to rest?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/09/hmv_makes_drm_easy/

New music deal for MySpace

Tunes from independent music labels will soon be sold on websites like MySpace.
Merlin, the new agency representing the world’s independent music sector, today agreed a deal with digital music company Snocap.
The group said the deal would allow thousands of independent labels across the world to sell digital downloads of their music from their MySpace pages and other sites.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007030543,00.html

Digi:nation

In a new piece of research launched today Guardian Newspapers Ltd reveals how the UK population is responding to the digital world - presenting a revealing picture of today's Digi:nation. Andre McGarrigle, Guardian Newspaper's Head of Commercial Planning and Research, said: "The Guardian's Digi:nation research provides a vivid insight into the nation's digital habits. It is essential reading for those seeking to engage with consumers online and make the most of the opportunities offered by the digital world." How Digi-friendly are we? Sixty seven per cent of the UK online population has tried some sort of digital activity, for example reading blogs. downloading music or podcasts. Over half have downloaded music and 8 per cent have downloaded a podcast. User-generated content is gradually becoming mainstream with over a third having read a blog and nearly 10 per cent having created their own, a further 17 per cent have created their own website. Sixty eight per cent of the population is now online (41.1m), and 84 per cent of households with internet access have a broadband connection. Fifty four per cent of the online population downloads music (32.6m) and 43 per cent of online population owns an iPod or MP3 player (26m). Podcasting - Content is king Entertainment genres such as music, comedy and radio shows are the most popular podcasts. Around 8% of the online population, over 3 million people, have downloaded a podcast with a further 11 million people planning to do so in the future. In this group the gender breakdown is 70 per cent male, 30 per cent female.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pressoffice/pressrelease/story/0,,1933613,00.html

P2P File Sharing - What is it?

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

EMI's move to release its catalogue without music protection has been welcomed, but critics claim Apple still has a lock-in.
The wired world, so they say, moves faster than meatspace. In that case, one month, three weeks and five days might seem like an awfully long time to the digerati.
But that's how long it took between Steve Jobs publishing his Thoughts on Music - an open essay telling the recording industry to drop copy protection - and EMI's announcement this week that it was going to offer downloads without Digital Rights Management (DRM).

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2049769,00.html#article_continue

EMI Drops Copy Protection

Music group EMI yesterday scrapped copy protection on all its digital tracks in a move that was immediately hailed by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs as "the next big step forward in the digital music revolution".
For the first time, downloads by artists including Robbie Williams, Coldplay and Joss Stone purchased from any online music store will be playable on any digital music player, including the market-leading iPod, with no restrictions on their use.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2048730,00.html#article_continue

Music Swapping Q&A

Questions asked:

I have downloaded music over the internet. Can I be sued?

Could I be sued for swapping just a few songs?

Can children be sued for uploading?

Why are record companies so worried?

Why are they chasing individual users?

Will legitimate online services ever rival the peer-to-peer sites?

Music Download Sales Soar In US

US download music sales increased by 77% in the first half of 2006, while album sales fell by 4.2%, according to research company Nielsen Soundscan.
More than 14 million full-album downloads were bought, compared with 6.5 million purchased during the first six months of 2005.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5160772.stm

US album sales drop 4.9% in 2006

Album sales in the United States - on CD and through legal downloads - fell by 4.9% in 2006, according to research company Nielsen Soundscan.
But the growth of digital music, especially the purchasing of individual songs, meant music sales rose by 19.4% overall, compared to the previous year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6233553.stm

Global digital music sales have almost doubled to around $2bn (£1bn) in 2006, according to an industry report. But the rise, which represents 10% of all sales, has not reached the music companies' "holy grail" of offsetting the fall in CD sales.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said digital sales could account for a quarter of all sales worldwide by 2010.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6270855.stm

Webcasting

Webcasting is one of the biggest growth areas for music online. It generally refers to the streaming of audio on the Internet, such as with Internet radio. As available user bandwidth increases, more and more major entertainment websites are streaming audio and creating genre based, commercial-free programming.
Passage of the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act (DPRA) of 1995 enabled copyright holders to retain the right to control certain digital performances of their sound recordings (the song as it’s recorded) and to receive a royalty when their songs are used.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 provided for, among other things, a statutory license that would grant webcasters the automatic right to use sound recordings in their streamed programming.

Music And The Internet

The new compact disc format is smaller, lighter, and more durable than vinyl and cassette. The sound quality does not diminish over time. CD players are inexpensive and accessible in cars, elsewhere, almost everywhere. Consumers are going digital and online.

http://www.riaa.com/issues/music/default.asp

Free Videos On Youtube

Music videos from artists including Madonna are to be made available free on the popular video website YouTube, as part of a deal with Warner Music.
The agreement will see thousands of videos and interviews placed online on YouTube. It is not the first deal of its kind, as television broadcasters have been working with the site for some time. Capitol Records is also among the music companies to have embraced the site, but YouTube co-founder and chief executive Chad Hurley said the Warner deal was one of the most important he had ever made. "This is a real landmark for our company," he said.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/netmusic/story/0,,1875805,00.html

Apple's iPhone

iPhone combines three amazing products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Digital Music Timeline

From cassette single to mobile phone:

• 1980 First cassette single Bow Wow Wow's C30, C60, C90 Go. The humble cassette single was phased out by most outlets in 2003, but Malcolm McLaren's post-punk prodigies were first to launch the format, which was a low cost way to cash in on the arrival of the Sony Walkman.
• 1983 The 12" single comes into its own New Order, Blue Monday. Born out of Joy Division, New Order's club classic became the country's biggest selling 12-inch single ever, but the cost of its sleeve almost bankrupted Factory Records in the process.
• 1985 CDs become the dominant format Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms. Although CDs had been adopted by classical music fans in 1983, Dire Straits' fifth album was one of the first major rock releases to use the format. Britain's third biggest selling album of all time helped drive sales of CD players.
• 2004 First album to be released on memory card Robbie Williams, Greatest Hits. The format was designed to appeal to owners of handheld computers and mobile phones. It failed to sell well.
• 2005 First band to top the charts using MySpace Arctic Monkeys. Credited as being the first major band broken on social networking site MySpace.com, the Sheffield outfit built up a considerable fanbase as people shared tracks online. They scooped this year's Mercury Music Prize, but admit they knew very little about the internet.
• First album to be launched exclusively on mobile phones Jamiroquai, Greatest Hits. Jamiroquai wanted to boost the sales of their greatest hits album by offering it to mobile phone users first.
• First single released exclusively on mobile phone Planet Funk, Stop Me. Hopes that the Anglo-Italian electronic five piece could make an impact on the chart - repeating the success of ringtone-based Crazy Frog single the previous year - were dashed.
• First single released on memory stick Keane, Nothing In My Way

The Memory Stick Single

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/netmusic/story/0,,1926038,00.html#article_continue

Keane's new single, Nothing In My Way is being released on a memory stick no bigger than a cigarette lighter.
It is being released on October 30th and will cost £3.99.
Along with the single, the memory stick will also contain other tracks, videos and screensavers.
The long-term gamble is to revive the singles market, which has suffered from over-commercialisation and an unhealthy obsession with teenage pop fans, who are deserting physical sales in droves. Digital downloads now account for around half of all top 40 sales.

Bebo's Music Store

Social networking website Bebo is introducing a music download service allowing bands to sell music.
Bebo introduced a bands section in July 2006 which allowed users to upload their own tracks. The new indiestore service, in partnership with web music firm 7digital, allows bands to upload and sell four tracks, with the band keeping 70% of the revenue.
Bands can upgrade to a "pro" service to sell up to 20 tracks and keep 80% of the revenue. The same tool can be used to play market tracks from any of the artists on the indiestore site, which includes tracks from 4,000 major and indie labels.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2044182,00.html#article_continue

Making money from P2P sharing

The music industry is beginning to understand that lawsuits don't deter pirates and that it must find ways to make money from P2P sharing.
P2Plawsuits.com is a website allowing American college students accused of uploading copyrighted music to peer-to-peer networks the opportunity to settle upfront and out of court.
In June 2003, the RIAA started legal proceedings against American citizens, and its strategy of targeting college campuses has incurred many negative headlines.
At the time that the RIAA started making noises about suing individuals, the British Phonogrpahic Industry (BPI) waited until the law was clear and a legitimate download business was in place.
The first of these cases, in January last year, resulted in a landmark legal ruling, with two men ordered to pay £5,000 and £1,500 respectively for copyright infringement. Additional costs and damages were estimated at up to £20,000.
According to Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, a media analysis company that specialises in monitoring P2P traffic, around 1bn tracks are traded illegally each month.
However, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reckons that about 20bn tracks were illegally shared last year.
The likelihood of you being caught of filesharing is very similar to that of being hit by an asteroid.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2043371,00.html#article_continue

Testing My Blog

1. Write a list of general terms related to NMTs.

• technology
• institutions
• audience
• issues
• the future
• innovation
• technophile
• technophobe
• push technology
• pull technology
• hot media
• cold media
• global village
• convergence
• personalisation
• interactivity
• democratisation
• exploitation
• consumption

2. Write a list of key terminology related to your chosen terminology.

• production
• content
• performance
• reception
• developments
• music distribution
• record labels
• digital autuers
• software
• multimedia
• stereo
• soundtrack
• anti-social technology
• piracy revolution

3. From your blog, select 10 statements (stats, quotations) that you have found during your research which relate to debates on audiences' changing experiences, institutions response to technology, the future etc. NAME ANY SOURCES.

The previous fall in downloads is thought to be due to music industry lawsuits, but now market researchers have seen the number of households downloading rising by six per cent in October and seven per cent in November.Elsewhere, other research has found Hong Kong to have the world record for the number of songs illegally downloaded - 130 million in the last two and a half years.

Increase in Illegal Downloads

Analysts in the US have found the number of people illegally downloading copyrighted music from the net has started to rise again after a six month slump.
The previous fall in downloads is thought to be due to music industry lawsuits, but now market researchers have seen the number of households downloading rising by six per cent in October and seven per cent in November.
Elsewhere, other research has found Hong Kong to have the world record for the number of songs illegally downloaded - 130 million in the last two and a half years.

http://www.weboptimiser.com/search_engine_marketing_news/1810253.html

Youtube - What Is It?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube

Digital Music

• Almost all music is distributed today in digital, rather than analog, form.
• Musical files compressed using MP3 occupy approximately 1/12 of the disk space occupied by uncompressed files, enabling them to be transmitted faster and stored more easily. Two groups have embraced MP3 technology especially enthusiastically. First, musicians unable to obtain recording contracts with the major record companies have found that, at modest cost, they can record their material in MP3 format and then make it available over the Internet. Second, high-school and college students have discovered that they can obtain on the Internet MP3 copies of most of the songs of their favorite musicians. A high percentage of the MP3 recordings available in this manner were prepared without the permission of the owners of the copyrights in the music.
• However, it undermines the ability of music creators to earn money. Two circumstances give rise to this problem. First, MP3 files are unsecured. Second, unlike the copies of musical works made using analog technology (such as ordinary casette tape recorders), the copies made using digital technology are perfect. In other words, each copy is identical to the original. The result: unauthorized, perfect MP3 copies of copyrighted recordings are widely available on the Internet for free.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/tfisher/Music.html

Exam Questions: June 2004

1a. -Sony

-Microsoft

-Nintendo

b. 'Sony's Everquest and Electronic Art's Ultima Online attract around 450,000 and 275,000 users respectively, paying between £6-8 a month'

''Hardcore' PC gamers have been taking part in online contests over local networks and the internet for years'

'Final Fantasy 11 attracted 120,000 online subscribers paying £7 a month in three months'

c. Sony and Microsoft are talking to continental broadband suppliers.

Always on

Offers speed and international dimension

Reliable

Multiplayer potential

2a. By saying they want to gain dominance of a market, they are hoping to gain a competetitive advanatage by coming out with something that is new or better than anything any other company has released and become the main controlling force in the gaming market.

Music Downloads FAQs Answered by Top Download Companies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4641054.stm

Answers to the questions:
Q1. Will download prices come down?
Q3. Why buy on the net?
Q5. What's the point of DRM?
Q7. How can teenagers be persuaded?
Q2. Should iPod users be punished?
Q4. Downloads aren't flexible
Q6. Will downloads last?
Q8. Have you ever "stolen" music?

Answered by:

• John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the trade body representing record labels worldwide, which has been instrumental in the global fight against piracy.
• Peter Jamieson, executive chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the UK music industry and has been leading the anti-piracy campaign in Britain.
• Steve Knott, managing director of HMV UK & Ireland, a leading high street chain that has recently opened its own online download store.
• Brad Duea, president of Napster, once the scourge of the music industry and now one of the largest legal music download retailers.

Digital Changes In Cinema

What are the advantages of digital projection for the consumers?

The big advantage of digital projection is the picture quality. With film, every imperfection gets shown as the 35 mm print passes through the projector, including scratches, fluff, blotches and so forth; not exactly what the director intended for their creative vision.
With a digital projector linked to a server there are no more stray hairs, scratches or dust - just a crystal clear picture.

Why has there been a slow take-up?

It's been a question of agreeing in advance. It's been a consensus building process, which started in 1999 with the first commercial release of Star Wars Episode One.
Since then there has been five years of testing the technology, building a consensus and agreeing the business models and technology to be used, and this has taken longer than most people expected.

Why is 'Hollywood' driving this technological change?

The Hollywood studios are driving this transition because they stand to make enormous savings, which they can pass on to the cinemas themselves.
The most obvious saving is in distribution costs. An average length feature film print costs around £700 ($1,300).
Encoding it and delivering a hard drive to the cinema works out at a fraction of that. In future, the possibility of delivering the movie by satellite or over the net has got the bean counters salivating.
One of the other great costs to the movie industry is piracy, which Hollywood claims has cost it $6bn (£3.2bn).
Distributing movies digitally means they can be encrypted before they even leave the studios, and then unlocked by software at the cinemas themselves.
Tinseltown's films could get more showings, too. Digital movies can be streamed from the server to different screens at the same time; or alternatively a variety of movies can be shown on the same screen throughout the course of a day.
But perhaps the most exciting thing for the cinemas is that digital projection gives them a flexibility they could only have dreamt when they had to use film.

What does digital projection offer in the way of the "future" for cinemas?

In truth 3D never really went away - it has been the staple of the big-screen Imax experience for years.
Imax uses two film projectors and two reels of film to fool our brains into thinking we are seeing 3D.
That process has been too expensive for regular cinemas to contemplate, but digital projectors make it affordable for the first time.
There is now a real buzz about 3D; there are seven new 3D movies slated for release in the coming year.
With technology available to recreate old classics, as well as show sporting events, in 3D there is a real feeling that 3D is finally coming of age.
Even so, places like the Hollywood entertainment museum put these developments in perspective. Technology is important, but it is just one part of a bigger picture.
Digital cinema, although it is being seen as a milestone on par with colour and sound, is still at its heart just cinema.
Ultimately it is the finished product, the movies themselves, which will ensure we keep coming back for more.

Napster - What is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster

Googlezon

In the year 2014 people have access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age.
Everyone contributes in some way.
Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape. However, the Press, as you know it, has ceased to exist. The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned. 20th Century news organizations are an after-thought, a lonely remnant of a not too distant past.
The road to 2014 began in the mid-20th Century.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland, invents the World Wide Web.
1994 sees the founding of Amazon.com. Its young creator dreams of a store that sells everything. Amazon’s model, which would come to set the standard for Internet sales, is built on automated personalized recommendations – a store that can make suggestions.
In 1998, two Stanford programmers create Google. Their algorithm echoes the language of Amazon, it treats links as recommendations, and from that foundation powers the world’s most effective search engine.
In 1999, TiVo transforms television by unshackling it from the constraints of time - and commercials. Almost no one who tries it ever goes back.
That year, a dot-com start-up named Pyra Labs unveils Blogger, a personal publishing tool.
Friendster launches in 2002 and hundreds of thousands of young people rush to populate it with an incredibly detailed map of their lives, their interests and their social networks. Also in 2002, Google launches GoogleNews, a news portal. News organizations cry foul. GoogleNews is edited entirely by computers.
In 2003, Google buys Blogger. Google’s plans are a mystery, but their interest in Blogger is not unreasonable.
Reason Magazine sends subscribers an issue with a satellite photo of their houses on the cover and information custom-tailored to each subscriber inside.
Sony and Philips unveil the world’s first mass-produced electronic paper.
Google unveils GMail, with a gigabyte of free space for every user.
Microsoft unveils Newsbot, a social news filter.
Amazon unveils A9, a search engine built on Google’s technology that also incorporates Amazon’s trademark recommendations.
And then, Google goes public.
Awash in new capital, the company makes a major acquisition. Google buys TiVo.
2005 – In response to Google’s recent moves, Microsoft buys Friendster.
2006 – Google combines all of its services - TiVo, Blogger, GMail, GoogleNews and all of its searches into the Google Grid, a universal platform that provides a functionally limitless amount of storage space and bandwidth to store and share media of all kinds. Always online, accessible from anywhere. Each user selects her own level of privacy. She can store her content securely on the Google Grid, or publish it for all to see. It has never been easier for anyone, everyone to create as well as consume media.
2007 – Microsoft responds to Google’s mounting challenge with Newsbotster, a social news network and participatory journalism platform. Newsbotster ranks and sorts news, based on what each user’s friends and colleagues are reading and viewing and it allows everyone to comment on what they see.
Sony’s ePaper is cheaper than real paper this year. It’s the medium of choice for Newsbotster.
2008 sees the alliance that will challenge Microsoft’s ambitions. Google and Amazon join forces to form Googlezon. Google supplies the Google Grid and unparalled search technology. Amazon supplies the social recommendation engine and its huge commercial infrastructure. Together, they use their detailed knowledge of every user’s social network, demographics, consumption habits and interests to provide total customization of content - and advertising.
The News Wars of 2010 are notable for the fact that no actual news organizations take part.
Googlezon finally checkmates Microsoft with features the software giant cannot match. Using a new algorithm, Googlezon’s computers construct news stories dynamically, stripping sentences and facts from all content sources and recombining them. The computer writes a news story for every user.
In 2011, the slumbering Fourth Estate awakes to make its first and final stand. The New York Times Company sues Googlezon, claiming that the company’s fact-stripping robots are a violation of copyright law. The case goes all the way to the Supreme Court, which on August 4, 2011 decides in favour of Googlezon.
On Sunday, March 9 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC.
The ‘Evolving Personalized Information Construct’ is the system by which our sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered and delivered. Everyone contributes now – from blog entries, to phone-cam images, to video reports, to full investigations. Many people get paid too – a tiny cut of Googlezon’s immense advertising revenue, proportional to the popularity of their contributions.
EPIC produces a custom contents package for each user, using his choices, his consumption habits, his interests, his demographics, his social network – to shape the product.
A new generation of freelance editors has sprung up, people who sell their ability to connect, filter and prioritize the contents of EPIC.
We all subscribe to many Editors; EPIC allows us to mix and match their choices however we like. At its best, EPIC is a summary of the world – deeper and broader than anything ever available before.

My Chosen New Media Technology

Music and the Internet