The digital age
I’ll be frank, I’m young. Well not so young. But young enough that I grew up with computers (it also didn’t help that my father has a masters in computer science). I remember being on the computer from about 5th grade and onwards. I participated in my first online counter-culture when in 1999 and by that time the digital age was just starting out. It’s interesting, I remember when Napster got started but I never used it. Thanks to family members, I used other sites at the time. I remember burning my first CD around the end of freshman year in high school. As high school progressed, CDs were burned and ripped so that I could play them in my car stereo. I have never been a big fan of radio, especially around where I live, partly because I feel the music they play sucks and because the radios in my cars have never been the best so the stations are always somewhat fuzzy, even if they’re local. I did get an mp3 player from my brother my sophomore year in high school but it only held 10=15 songs and didn’t work all that well with our computers.
I finally got my first mp3 player my first year in college. It was an iRiver made by a South Korean company and I loved it. It was 80gigs and I was even able to put a remote (seen here) for it and it was marvelous. In some ways I really miss it. After two years of hard use (thanks to college “sharing” ;)), my iriver finally died (though not for lacking of mechanical surgery on the part of my brother and I, trying to replace the batteries (which helped for a bit) among other things). I broke down and got a 60gig ipod classic. At this point, I had, what I thought, was a lot of music and a 60gig was the best that I could do, with the money I had. I loved being able to have both music and videos on it. I finally started hinting to my parents that I could really use a new iPod for Christmas (of 09). I had a ton of music and so I was very fortunate enough to receive a 160 gig video classic for Christmas of 2009. It’s been awesome and I don’t even have it halfway filled up (though I could if I wanted to). I couldn’t imagine ever going back now.
Professor Simon asked “Are library music collections and technologies keeping up with these changes?” Yes and No, at least my local public library isn’t in terms of mp3s. They still have cds that you can check out. At my local library you could potentially download a mp3(s) if you had your own laptop and where on the wifi but on their computers I doubt it, though I don’t really know as I’ve never used their computers for internet. The library, though a contract with the state library now has audio books available to download. Some download as .wma’s (For me as an ipod user though, this is annoying as these files don’t play on ipods. So you have to convert them, but there are free and easy conversion programs out there) others download as mp3s. Some you can only play for two weeks, some you can’t burn to CD, and some you can play as much as you want and burn to cds if you wish. So in that sense they are keeping up with technology (this contract also allows you to download ebooks as well).
Thoughts on Gordon
Chapter 5 – Music Videos, Audiovisuals, Concerts, and Documentaries.
Before I comment completely on this chapter, it is interesting to note that while watching videos on the internet has risen, it seems that the viewing of them on TV has fallen. The two main cable channels that show videos (and yes I’m aware that there is MTV2, etc) are MTV and Vh1. Both of these channels have consistently more show programming such as reality shows, than music videos. This is what both networks started out to be.
Gordon makes a comment about how videos are being played more and more on the internet and how companies are requiring those who do to get certain licenses. Well, there are programs out there that will take any video and will edit the audio out of the video for you. This is yet another issue that music companies will have to face with the internet.
The rest of this chapter deals with the issues surrounding concerts and documentaries streamed live on the internet (or even showing them on TV). It is such a complicated process that it is a wonder music videos, concerts and documentaries are even produced!
Chapter 6 – Music Licensing Fundamentals.
This chapter looks at all the different types of licensing that happens with different types of recordings and sounds that happen. One thing in this chapter that really interested me was that “generally producers are not obligated to clear songs or masters for programs produced on PBS or other public broadcasting stations as defined in the act” (88). This got me wondering: Does this mean anybody who produced a program for PBS can play any song they want? What about programs like “American’s Ballroom Challenge" where the music is played in the background?
Here’s a question: In today’s ballroom competitions, there is music played of course, do these competitions have to get licensing to play the music? Or are they paid for in general stuff like PBS does?
Website Reviews
This website, specially this article gives a great detailed article on what is an mp3 and where does it fit in with all the other different types of sound files
I don’t buy mp3s all that often (I tend to buy CDS) and if I do it is from Amazon. Why? Because iTunes is non-customer friendly and their system is easy to hack. I had my account hacked (even though I have never bought anything from them before) and the person stole over $105 dollars from me in terms of buying music and apps (I had my credit card on there because I bought my first ipod from the website). Itunes refused to do anything about it and even though I had a police number (I called the cops), they finally got so fed up with me trying to get somebody to answer my question on how itunes was insuring my credit card number safety as well as what they were doing to track this person down, they finally told me that they were going to sick their legal team on me if I didn’t quit contacting them. So I do not use itunes in terms of the store anymore.
I also don’t use satellite radio, as much as I would love to (because XM Radio has a Broadway station!) because it is expansive and I don’t have the money to put that type of system in my car.
As for artist information, sites, I tend to use the artist's own webpage (most artists today have one) for information. Or I will ask around. I never use Wikipedia for information on people.
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