I've had a rich and full past involving media, from the television to the video game. Though I have cut down in recent years, I used to watch TV nigh-constantly. Video games also took up a substantial portion of my time, but once again I've cut down. I read a great deal, and I have not cut down on that, which suits me as a Professional Writing major. In the future I hope to publish some of my writing, either in the form of a novel or some short stories. Just a year ago I began to play guitar and very recently I have taken to musical composition, and though it is comparatively new to me, music is as important to me as my writing, and I similarly hope to create some and get it out there in the form of an album or two, maybe more. Who knows.
My favorite music video, keeping air guitar alive.
In the past four chapters of our textbook I've been learning much, but perhaps the four most important concepts are Web 2.0, the evolution of popular music and the parallels with our culture, profit from music, and how physical CDs and music distribution is becoming outdated.
Web 2.0, a concept that I am a part of now with the creation of this blog, is simply an internet in which the focus moves toward community-created content. In this "web of the future" everyone is able to create their own pictures, music, writing, or what have you, and put it on the internet for all to see and benefit from. This is bringing us closer together than ever before, as it is now a mere click of a button to have a conversation with someone on the other side of the earth.
Popular music evolved out of the blues and R&B movements, and Rock and Roll, arguably the most important musical revolution in the last century, created a cultural storm that mixed many previous forms of music together into one whole once thought of as the first "integrationist" music. It transformed both the recording industry and the radio industry and quickly became one of the most widespread genres of music. The cultural shift that came with it greatly aided the burgeoning civil rights movement.
The profit that most artists get from their music sales was also shown in the reading. Frankly, it disgusted me. On a seventeen-dollar CD, the artist only makes 50 cents to two dollars, while the recording company makes the lion's share of five dollars a sale. A similar situation occurs with the 99 cent downloads popularized by iTunes: the artist only makes a tenth of the price, while the record company makes 57 percent, and iTunes takes the rest. I personally find it very offensive that an artist who spends so much time and effort to create their music makes such a tiny portion of money off the sale of their own product.
Speaking of iTunes, the idea that was a concept a mere six years ago has risen to the number one music retailer in the US. In addition the recent rise in popularity of pirating music off the internet has shown that now that the internet is a medium of free information flow, physical constructs like CDs and books are slowly leaving the marketplace in favor of digital replacements such as Kindle and MP3s.
Pictured: The iTunes logo, quickly becoming ironic.
We have also been slowly mastering four categories of tools with which to analyze media. They include the three sections of the brain, the eight shifts in media, the seven principles of media education, and twenty-nine persuasive techniques. I've been particularly interested in the persuasive techniques, but I have been at home with all four tool sets and I feel confident about my knowledge of them.
With any luck, this semester will answer my one burning question about media:
Where will media be going in the future, in light of it changing so dramatically even in the past five to ten years?
Not only do you like to write, as you say, Remy...
ReplyDeleteBut you are a darn fine writer.
This is a very good blog post.
To make it excellent, add some hyperlinks, yes?
I look forward to reading more,
W