#md4214

[ethanblagden-blog]

[ethanblagden-blog]

How have technology and changing format influenced the way we listen to, create and value music?

“Technology is all about using the power of science to make life better for people” and this holds true for the modern day. Over the last few decades, we have seen not only development in technology but also a development in the way we apply and utilize this technology. This is strongly evident in the music industry. Developments in the industry have been beneficial to all practitioners in the way they not only access but also create, distribute and market music. Technology has helped advancements such as the creation of portable music and the personalised listening experience that accompanies this as well as the development of the internet and the plethora of opportunities this opened up for the music industry.  The way in which we engage and access with music has, in recent years, been heavily influenced by technology and changes in format. Our ability to listen and preview music alongside the way in which we download and store said music is almost completely digitally controlled. With companies like Spotify and YouTube which allow us to freely access and stream music as well as digital libraries such as Amazon Music or iTunes. It is clear to see that technology not only advances itself but also all aspects of its predecessors. In the last 150 years, the development of one aspect of storing and listening to sound has developed so far. The first concept of this would have been the phonograph in 1877 in which sound could be etched into a metal cylinder and reproduced in a different location and setting to that of the original, this has only since progressed. The cylinder used on a phonograph was adapted and developed into a disk for using the gramophone. Both of these inventions utilized physical labour to wind up the device to produce the energy required to work. The disk used for the Gramophone was originally made of glass and was eventually replaced with plastic records to allow for mass production. In the 1970s the cassette was introduced which featured the use of a magnetic strip to store and play music, this was groundbreaking as it featured the ability to record onto two sides of a medium. Shortly after came the compact CD which quickly beat the cassette due to being able to skip to specific songs. 1979 brought the first portable player, the Walkman, as developed by Sony it was the first opportunity people had to easily listen to music outside of their homes and as such it sold incredibly well and even now are still highly valued. Portable CD players were slowly transitioned in around the 1990s however at the start of the 00s the invention of the iPod came to existence opening allowing the possibility to listen to hundreds of songs from a singular device. The iPod is seen as the true point in which music had officially transitioned into the digital era. Previously CDs, while easier to burn lacked the ability to store the vast number of tracks that could be held upon Apple’s invention. As we move further into the present day we see this gap close with CDs now able to store a quantity of music equal to that of a digital device.

[ethanblagden-blog]

Reading List - Research Task 3

Text 1: Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky

Shirky, C. (2009). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. London: Penguin.

This covers the concept of the New Audience and the way in we interact with others socially to converse and the networks and webs that we create and how technological advancements such as the internet have affected these.

Text 2:  Making is Connecting - David Gauntlett

Gauntlett, D. (2011). Making is connecting. 2nd ed. Wiley Publishers.

This text looks at the concept of how technological developments have caused us to adapt our understanding of content as well as commenting on the style of content being produced and the social power held behind creativity.

Text 3: The Gig Economy - Diane Mulcahy

Mulcahy, D. (2017). The gig economy. 1st ed. New York, NY: AMACOM.

Mulcahy explores the gig economy and the way in which we can take ownership of this to further careers and take control of your working life.

Text 4: Blockchain Revolution - Don and Andrew Tapscott

Tapscott, D. and Tapscott, A. (2016). Blockchain Revolution. 1st ed. Penguin Books.

This particular text comments on the discovery and implication of blockchain technology and its applications beyond the standard ideas of Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.

[fergusdd]

[MD4214] Reading List

Author: 

Sudhir Khatwani

Article title:

Is Blockchain The Solution The Music Industry Is Looking For?

Website title:

CoinSutra - Bitcoin Community

URL:

https://coinsutra.com/blockchain-music-industry/

This article focuses on what blockchain fundamentally is and how its implementation into the music industry could affect the payment structure.

I intend to reference this when talking about how changing the way revenue (from song sales) is distributed between the involved parties could change the structure of the currently established framework in the music industry, possibly rendering intermediaries unnecessary allowing artists to earn more for their work.

Author:

Daniel Sanchez

Article title:

Goodbye, Net Neutrality? What This Could Mean For the Music Industry

Website title:

Digital Music News

URL:

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/11/20/fcc-net-neutrality-music-industry/

This article delves into how the repeal of net neutrality could affect indie artists, publishers and record labels.

I want to reference this article when talking about how artists make very little money from digital music streaming and often rely on merchandise sales and gigging/touring to generate revenue and how this change could affect the access that fans would have to the artists merchandise/content.

Author:

Eamonn Forde

Article title:

Is YouTube wrecking the music industry – or putting new artists in the spotlight?

Website title:

The Guardian

URL:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/18/youtube-music-industry-artists-spotlight

This article talks about how youtube interacts with the music industry, laying out some of the upsides and downsides of the platform.

I want to use this article to back up how youtube provides analytics and instant feedback to artists in a way that few platforms can match as well as providing almost unparalleled exposure for many up-and-coming artists.

Author :

Imogen Heap & Don Tapscott

Article title:

Blockchain Could Be Music’s Next Disruptor

Website title:

Fortune

URL:

http://fortune.com/2016/09/22/blockchain-music-disruption/

This article focuses on how the introduction of blockchain could change the roles that certain intermediary bodies play and how it can make the music industry a more personal, peer to peer industry sans the large companies who currently reap the benefits of artists.

I want to talk about how this could change the way that artists collaborate, how it can change the products that artists release and even change how fans interact with these products as artists could now create smart contracts.

[nataliajanusz-blog]

[fergusdd]

[11/10/18] Authenticity In Music

Authentic Artist: NF - He is an (singer) artist who focuses a lot on very personal matters and emotions, his authenticity is a core part of what allows him to connect with his audience on such a deep level which I think a large part of his appeal is owed to.

Non-Authentic Artist: Lil Skies

- He is a rapper, part of the new wave era of rap. While his music is quite personal in some tracks I feel his image is more constructed to fit in with the norm in the “mumble rap” scene. He has a lot of face tattoos, in an interview he describes them as almost essential to the genre of music that he performs, he said that although he does like his face tattoos he sees some of them as more of a sacrifice he had to make for his career, even having a black rose tattooed on the side of his face for it to feature as the cover art for his album “Life Of A Dark Rose.”

[mattwasntthere-blog]

MD4214 Political Economy Notes

Political economy 27th September 

All about critical thought and analysis 

Where is music and technology taking us?

Environments create outcomes & outcomes create environments

‘How music works’ - David Byrne 

‘Paid in full’ - means that they are getting what they earned  out of the music industry because at the time of this album, the industry was mainly white 

If this image was two white men in their position then the picture would have a completely different meaning

Denotation - what you see / what is being portrayed

Connotation- the meaning behind what you see

This is the white equivalent of the previous image

The fact that there is a musical instrument and an open book suggests that they think they are better than everyone else 

The lute also suggests ‘discord’ which suggests between the church and the merchant sector, there wasn’t total harmony.

Years ago, music was a ritual and part of cultures existing and was a key part of religious ceremonies.

In the early 20th century, ‘modernism’ in art and music was all about

perfecting form, content and meaning

Experimenting with form, content and meaning

Experimenting with new methods of creating art and music (new materials, new sounds and new technologies etc).

Edgar Varlisse -

‘Father of electronic music’

Brought the Theremin into public eye

Created a scored concerto using just percussion

During the later part of the 20th century, Art and Music became more playful and less purist eg, Andy Warhol 

Things changed but did it changed for the worse?

Lecture 2

Marshall McLuhan 

The medium is the message 

Gutenberg printing press changed how music was made, similar to auto tune nowadays, this outcome of auto tune changed the environment and it made music different and created odd sounding vocal lines 

Tv was the to them what Internet is like to us, they thought it was bad. But it was the medium that was going to change the way people communicated not the messages that were being shown on it. 

Decentralisation - the lightbulb liberates peoples time as it puts them in control of the light and they can work all day and night 

Formats:

CDs last 78 mins meaning that artists had more options to choose with their music 

To fit all of the 9th symphony is the only reason it’s 78 minutes 

Bands such as ‘Wolf Alice’ are still making 45 minute albums 

James brown released 6 albums and 12 singles in 1966 

The Beatles lifespan was only 7 years but produced a whole lot of music 

These days it can take an artist 7 years to make one album 

The medium can be more important than the media because it changes our behaviour and how we listen. 

‘The defiant ones’ on Netflix 

The content of any medium is always another medium 

YouTube, mobile phones, cassettes changed the music business 

The internet is the main one, it created streaming which involves playlists etc...

There is always one medium inside another 

McLuhan describes the world as a global village after printed word became popular 

Frankfurt school

[marie-tau-blog]

Political Economy - Research Paper

My research for this paper will be on the topic of the political economy of the music industry.

Political economy within music comes under three sub-heading which are law, Customs and Government.

Within law comes things such as Copy right and PRS (performing right society). Copyright is used to make sure that people don’t steal other people work. PRS collects royalties on behalf of the artist, whenever their songs are performed in public, which can be at any venue.

Customs includes all the things that we as humans do on a day to day basis. E.g. attending weddings, birthday parties and listening to music. While at many social event many people like to include music so that the atmosphere becomes more lively instead of dead silence.

Lastly comes government this mainly includes politically based songs. E.g. Marvin Gaye – What’s going on.

A lot of people take the term ‘style over substance’ quite literally and a huge number of artists are more about how they look than how talented they are. For example, on the x factor many of the contestants hide behind a lot of their image which shows them to be a better artist than they actually are. An example that I looked at was ‘Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday’ album cover. If you were to look at the cover it has an image of Nicki Minaj sat down with one leg out and another one bent. The items of clothing that she is wearing look like silk which is a really expensive fabric. The posture of her body looks like she is showing off all that she’s now got due to her fame.  

Artist Identity is another common thing that a lot of artist seem to work on so that they are liked by many people which enables them to sell many records and then go on to make a lot more money. An example of the opposite to this is Ed Sheeran, he is an artist who is really real with his music and doesn’t have lodes of fancy back drops and bands while performing live. Most of the time it will just be him and his guitar and I think’s that’s why a lot of people can relate to him.

New genres are formed from day to day, one platform that a lot of this happens on is sound cloud. People take influences from a range of different artist and try to include that within their own music. An upcoming genre of music that I looked at was ‘Country dance music’. It is a 4 step beat with electronic production overlaid with folk and country, melodies and harmonies. An example of this is ‘Timber’ by Pitball featuring Kesha. Some of the instruments that were used (washboard and banjo) give it an extra country/folk feel to the song as those are instrument that would commonly be used it that genre of music. The tempo of the song is fast which makes it a lot more danceable.

People value music because it’s a way in which people can get to know other people. Science shows that there is a strong link between language development and listening development. As humans we engage a lot more with the words of the music we are listening to suppose to the book we are reading. When learning musical instrument, it allows us to express ourselves and to become more confident in ourselves. In general music has shown to make a lot of people happier and healthier.

Sources used:                                                                    https://www.virgin.com/music/four-new-music-genres-you-need-to-know    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHUbLv4ThOo   http://www.banesmusiconline.co.uk/site/parents-students/the-value-of-music/ http://pitchfork.com/features/article/9628-how-much-is-music-really-worth/