Paying for companies to distribute your music vs. 'DIY' distribution for free

1. "These companies rely on their own affiliates to promote the artists that they have and really don't do anything to promote the artists. As an ex-affiliate for iTunes, I used to sell digital downloads for a five percent commission, so for a ninety-nine cent song that equates to a nickel. The artist in turn gets sixty-nine cents, leaving a twenty-five cent profit for iTunes, who are just an online warehouse cataloging music in hopes that their affiliates are successful in promoting them."

2. CDbaby is a bit similar in that they are also a music warehouse that relies on other distributors, affiliates and the artists themselves to generate the sale while taking $4 for each CD sold to drop it in the mail. I can see artists with a CDBaby Logo on their website or MySpace page to buy their CD. If an artist wants to make $7 per CD sold, then the cost to the consumer is $11 through CDbaby. Why not just sell the CD directly using PayPal, add in their processing costs and sell it for $7.50? An independent artist will probably generate more sales at the lower cost."

3. My own band, the Lime Green Snorkels, distributed our entire recorded live album from a gig on YouTube. In total we have had 237 hits covering 9 songs over a period of 3 months. Our highest number of hits on a single video was 49 on our cover of Sweet Child Of Mine by Guns N Roses

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/666683/new_cd_distribution_channel_for_independent.html?cat=33

iPad falls short

Some of the sting might have been taken out of disappointing retail sales by pre-orders. According to some press reports there were more than a million of these.

However today the Wall Street Journal published a statement from Apple which said that more than 300,000 Ipads were sold on day one. This would be considered great, but if you take into account the fact the figure included all the pre-sales and the hype that said a million would be flogged on Day One that number is dismal.

analyst Gene Munster had predicted Apple would sell 600,000 to 700,000 units

example exam question report

Stewart Ackerley

Rupert Murdoch vs. Google

9. Discuss the extent to which the distribution and consumption of media have been transformed by the Internet

· He accuses the Internet search engines such as Google, Ask.com and Microsoft of stealing journalism from other media outlets. He proposes that pay-walls should be employed with newspaper websites that allow users to view a single paragraph, and then pay a subscription fee to view the rest. This method has already been used on Murdoch’s website for The Wall Street Journal, and for his British newspapers, The Times and The Sunday Times. This way, the distribution has changed so that you will have to pay to read news online, in the same way you pay for a newspaper.

· Murdoch declares the new technological advance known as the iPad to be the saviour of newspapers, in electronic form. The iPad has applications that allow a user to subscribe to various newspapers for a price, and view them at will. This has changed both distribution and consumption in one fell swoop, as a printed newspaper can now be viewed on a handheld gadget at the touch of a button.

· Google’s News Index changes the way news is distributed, in a way that Rupert Murdoch is trying to avoid. Google Search opens the door for websites to chase the same news article. If you’re the only one who has a particular news story, you won’t appear in the Search Index. Conversely, if you’re the first with a major news story, then it’s a matter of seconds before you’re buried under a mass pile of websites copying and pasting your article. This also affects consumption as millions of people worldwide can view the article you wrote, on a vast number of different websites.

Charles Leadbeater - We Think

Charles Leadbeater - The Rise of the Amateur Professional

Wikinomics

1. Peering - file sharing and the music industry

In terms of advantages, there are many to consider. It does lower distribution costs as producers and artists don't have to pay extra money for CD duplication and then for the advertisement and distribution in stores across the world. With simple operations such as this, even a single track could spread far and wide across the world in a matter of days, even hours. In the early days of file sharing, websites such as mp3.com were a haven for unsigned artists wanting to make a name for themselves. Even today, many unsigned and new upcoming bands make their songs available to download for free. The Arctic Monkeys made their first album completely free to download on the internet, and as such rose to fame and fortune by being number 1 in the download charts. Artists themselves make only 1% per album sold, but make their living from tours, ticket sales, royalties, advertising and merchandising.

The downside being that record companies are at risk from the 'evils' of free file sharing. Statistics show that 95% of music downloaded online is acquired illegally. To prevent the risk of their businesses being ran into the ground, they choose to stretching to extreme measures to stop those responsible. The vast majority of CD's come with a DRM code imprinted in the data that prevents the consumers from uploading the songs from the disc on to their computers and distributing them illegally. File sharing websites such as Kazaa and Napster have been successfully sued and converted to legal downloading sites, or in the much extreme cases such as the Pirate Bay, shutdown completely.

2. Free creativity - Youtube

Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

Web 1.0 - the general term that has been created to describe the Web before the "bursting of the Dot-com bubble" in 2001, which is seen by many as a turning point for the internet.

Web 2.0 - commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,[1] and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.

Web 3.0 - Web 3.0 is, among other things, about the Semantic Web and personalization.[30] Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, considers the Semantic Web an "unrealisable abstraction" and sees Web 3.0 as the return of experts and authorities to the Web. For example, he points to Bertelsman's deal with the German Wikipedia to produce an edited print version of that encyclopedia.[31] CNN Money's Jessi Hempel expects Web 3.0 to emerge from new and innovative Web 2.0 services with a profitable business model.[32]

Timeline of the Internet

1958 - The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created the first network of linked radar

1969 - The first two nodes of ARPANET in UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International are connected - the first incarnation of the internet.

1991 - CERN complete and publicize the World Wide Web project. ViolaWWW becomes one of the first popular internet browsers.

Links

mediaandtheonlineage.blogspot.com