How we consume music

Below is an article on how social networking has changed the way people consume music taken from http://blog.luon.com/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=379

Social networks are changing the way people consume music at a time when piracy is on the rise and the rate of growth of legal downloads has slowed. - Some 53% of people actively surf social networking sites to find music. - Some 46% of those surveyed wished it was easier to purchase music they had discovered on social networking sites, for instance via a "buy now" button on the site.- A further 30% said they went on to buy or download music that they had discovered on a social network site. If there isn't an integrated purchase function, people will go elsewhere, including illegal downloads, to get the music they want

The way we consume music has changed dramatically in recent years and gone the times people would only consume music via the radio and at rare concerts. The new era of consuming music has rapidly changed and will continue to develop as the way people consume music continues to be so popular. The access to consuming music has increased dramatically in past ten years and within almost every new electronic good it offers the buyer the added bonus of being able to listen to music from it, for example the mobile phone has changed to accommodate music.

There are many other ways in which access to music results in increased listening with the main change being the development of the mp3 player. Gone are the days of the cassette player and now even the cd player, once so popular is also on the decline into which it will be pushed out of this competitive market. The introduction and growth of the ipod and mp3 player has produced the decline of the above. Television is now a great way in which many people consume music from the music channels to the many radio stations such as Sky offer. Increased concerts and the introduction of the digital radio have also led to the positive wave of consuming music in which people have many choices into how they want to consume music and the type of music of their preference.

For my new media technology work i will be researching digital television and digital radio:
Digital television refers to the sending and receiving of moving images and sound by means of discrete (digital) signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV
Digital Radio describes radio technologies which carry information as a digital signal.

List of possible research areas:
What is Digital Switchover?
What effect does the digital switchover have on the population?
What effect does it have on businesses?
How will viewing figures be affected?
Will digital television and digital radio have an effect on how companies make their mony?
Will it change the type of entertainment we watch and affect the times of the popular shows?

1 Endism - The belief that something of significant scope and duration, particularly something negative, is coming to an end.
2 Media ecosystem is a term used to describe the relationship between weblogs and traditional journalism.
3 Narrowcasting is the production and distrubtion of material on video tapes, cassettes, etc
4 The web is a computer programming system to implement literate programming
5 Medium is a means or instrumentality for storing or communicating information
Pull or pull technology refers to requesting data from another program or server.
6 Bloggers can post about whatever they like and can express their opinions on those maters.

What is 'the Fourth Estate'?Is new media technology responsible for the decline in newspapers?What does it mean "maybe the internet is already the cyberspace of the fourth estate"?

The media itself is fourth estate the most important state. As well as fourth estate there are also three other estates the Courts, Religion and Parliament
New media technologies has had a major effect in the decline of newspapers and will continue to have one for the forseeable future as new media technology improves. For example you can now get wireless internet access on your phone further declining the newspaper industry. Therefore newspapers are having to change the way they present themselves and changing what they offer too move with the times and increase sales. The mass market newspaper has shifted from a populist news agenda to one of gossip allied to a political orientation. They have participated in the rise of celeb culture and have culviated links withTV soaps and 'reality TV, programmes such as Big Brother. It is important for newspapers to devise new ways to keep the public interested in newspaper and therefore continueing sales and keeping themselves in business.draft

Feedback #1

Nick, this blog is not up to date. You need to include the research into the film industry this week.
U/4

Digitality - New way of encouraging information
Interactivity - New way of streaming information
Dispersal – How information can be shared with others
Hypertextuality – Accessing information anyway you like previously A to B to C now you can go from A straight to Z
Virtuality - How real something is/how it is presentedConvergent - How new media technologies are merging and converging their ideas

Social Concerns of Second Life
Second life is quite frankly changing people lives dramatically which in the long term future can have a poor bearing on their lives. For people to quit their real life jobs to take up a career making in money would have been seen as absolutely obscene a couple of years ago, but the truth of the matter is that it is happening and people are making themselves a good living from it. It is having a major influence on many people’s lives who have become addicted to this cyber life because of the huge pulling power that the longer they spend on it the more money they can make. Yes Second life will have major disaffects such as you are missing out on proper face to face communication and other social aspects in a normal working day. It can have a major effect on people’s health everyone sitting in front of a computer nine to five and more is not good for you but when you can make a substantial amount of money from it that can fund your life people don’t care about the negative effects.

Many big businesses have joined the band wagon and are now also making money out of something so easy to create and the fact they can make money from a cyber space life is remarkable yet so easy. Below is a piece of information I took from the BBC business section that gives a brief insight into Second Life works and gives you an idea how some people have become millionaires by being successful in this cyber space world:
Thousands of players make real world money out of their Second Life businesses, which may include designing virtual clothes, making vehicles or owning a casino.
There are currently nearly 200,000 people players who regularly meet, run their business or just hang out in the game.
In April another MMOG called Project Entropia blurred the virtual and physical worlds even further by issuing real world cash cards to players to make cash withdrawals from the virtual accounts.
A gamer in the Entropia Universe also made headlines, and the record books, when a virtual space station was sold for $100,000 (£56,200).