The future of music

With the popularizing of social media, the music industry also will develop with this trend. On May fifth, 2008, Trent Reznor announced on the official Nine Inch Nails website that he gave his new album free of charge under a creative commons license. This shows that in the future the the record labels might go to the end. Since in the traditional recording industry, for a CD from the record label who publishing the album, the manufacturers, distributors, to retailers, there's too many participates to get profit. But with the internet most of these costs are zero, therefore artists can offer the audiances at a much lower price or even free without the record labels to publish their music. A decade ago, six labels held 77 percent of recorded music sales worldwide. Today, those six are down to four Universal (31%), Sony-BMG (25%), Warner (15%) and EMI (9.5%) and none has got to grips with the internet revolution. And we know that besides selling albums artists also make their money fromsome other way such as touring and performing, songwriting or selling t-shirts, hats. However under the control of the record labels, the business is unfair to vast majority of musicians, since most artists never recouped their royalty advances. In the future the power base will be shifted from the record labels to the artists and mangers, and the music fans. Through social network artists and their managers can make things happen on their own. With it, the structure of this industry will changed. the creative people like the artists and songwriters along with their business managers.will be at the center of the future of Music.

Launching singles and letting the audiences to select songs they like to make a album by themselves. As in the past, buyers were forced to buy albums to get the one or two songs they loved. But now the people can buy the song they want one at a time, maybe even free. Artist managements can use Facebook and MySpace as routes for launching new talent and songs free to likely fans.

And in the future the The music industry may abandon certain restrictive digital rights management tools, and might finally .abandon DRM. Music will come free with advertisements attached. This means trying out ad-supported models, for instance delivering fixed commercials such as sell concert tickets or merchandise in support of the artist, social networks, and whatever else people develop with free music tracks.

by Wang, Yiqing

The future of music

With the popularizing of social media, the music industry also will develop with this trend. On May fifth, 2008, Trent Reznor announced on the official Nine Inch Nails website that he gave his new album free of charge under a creative commons license. This shows that in the future the the record labels might go to the end. Since in the traditional recording industry, for a CD from the record label who publishing the album, the manufacturers, distributors, to retailers, there's too many participates to get profit. But with the internet most of these costs are zero, therefore artists can offer the audiances at a much lower price or even free without the record labels to publish their music. A decade ago, six labels held 77 percent of recorded music sales worldwide. Today, those six are down to four Universal (31%), Sony-BMG (25%), Warner (15%) and EMI (9.5%) and none has got to grips with the internet revolution. And we know that besides selling albums artists also make their money fromsome other way such as touring and performing, songwriting or selling t-shirts, hats. However under the control of the record labels, the business is unfair to vast majority of musicians, since most artists never recouped their royalty advances. In the future the power base will be shifted from the record labels to the artists and mangers, and the music fans. Through social network artists and their managers can make things happen on their own. With it, the structure of this industry will changed. the creative people like the artists and songwriters along with their business managers.will be at the center of the future of Music.

Launching singles and letting the audiences to select songs they like to make a album by themselves. As in the past, buyers were forced to buy albums to get the one or two songs they loved. But now the people can buy the song they want one at a time, maybe even free. Artist managements can use Facebook and MySpace as routes for launching new talent and songs free to likely fans.

And in the future the The music industry may abandon certain restrictive digital rights management tools, and might finally .abandon DRM. Music will come free with advertisements attached. This means trying out ad-supported models, for instance delivering fixed commercials such as sell concert tickets or merchandise in support of the artist, social networks, and whatever else people develop with free music tracks.

by Wang, Yiqing

The future

I remember when i every month use to go and buy the latest CDs from my favorite artist, I use to ask my mom for money, no matter what happened had to get my hands on the latest albums. Now days are changed, those days are gone, now I could never imagine do the same, spend that much money (the prices gone up to the double) on a CD when I can get it digitally. The traditional business model the record companies had are not working anymore, new ways has to be found to make us pay for the music we listen to, digital store like iTunes have succeeded to some extent but its far from competing with file-sharing, ok I know file-sharing is like stealing, we would never even in our wildest dreams go to a CD-store and take a album put it in our pocket and come out without paying, and if we did we would e ashamed of telling others what we done, then why is it so accepted to steal music from the net, everybody done it sometime and we proudly tell each other about our latest downloads. We don’t have any moral issues, James Rachels in the ”The Elements of Moral Philosophy” talks about morality, he states that Morality consists in a set of rules, governing how people are to treat one another, that rational people will agree to accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others follow those rules as well. But I don’t see any “mutual” benefit from paying a large amount of money. I rather spend those money on going to the concerts. So the way I see the future, 10 years from now, the industry will continue on the same track it is now, digital stores will be in the game, the older generation or those that can be “politically” harmed (from there businesses) will use those stores, but our generation have a hard time accepting that “for owning a track you must pay fro it”. What the industry must do is to find ways to brainwash generations after us and make them willing to pay for the content they are using. Otherwise for the record companies and performers, the money lies in selling tickets for concerts, which can benefit the new unknown musicians who are waiting for their brake trough, they can share their music for free over the net and earn money on concerts. The artists will also earn money on selling other product under their name; they make a brand of their names.



By Tala

Essay Three – The Future of Music is Broadband

First of all, ten years is a long time. Maybe not for a Redwood tree or a character in Lord of The Rings, but to the rest of us it adds up to a quite substantial amount of time. Ten years ago the internet was something new and exotic – now it is in our everyday life. Back then the record companies made staggering profits and thought that the future (and probably the world) belonged to them. Now they are a text book example of myopic thinking and students all over the world are taught about how dangerous it is not being able to adapt to the changing markets and names as EMI and Universal are benchmark for how things shouldn’t be done.

Okay, that was a brief history lesson, now what about the future? Just a couple of weeks ago I received an invitation to try a new service called Spotify. It utilizes streaming technology and consequently requires that you are online in order to use it. I believe like Chris Anderson that in the future wireless internet will be as widespread as the Paris Hilton-cult. Almost everywhere in the Western world there will be accessible wi-fi and thus Spotify is something that has the potential to become the future of music. I do feel that there are some things that need to be taken care of. One thing is the limited selection presented in the service. Spotify has not a single Beatles’ album on it is servers and Beatles is regarded as the best band ever. However, if the managers for Spotify can ensure a supply of almost all the music I really think that this is the way to go.

How should we listen to it? Well I think that the telephone is the way to go, just as Apple has shown with its iPhone. It is possible to combine both the music and communication function as long as the battery issue can be sorted out (now the limited battery life is a problem), but I am sure that within the next ten years someone smart will have come up with an answer for that problem too.

Last but not least musicians have to get paid and my suggestion here is that they should get paid in relation to how much they get played. If their songs are popular on the likes of Spotify they should get more, if not so much they should get paid less. The billing procedure should be as simple as possible, so I think that the wi-fi suppliers should do it. Hence the Spotify fee should be included in what you pay for your internet connection. If you don’t want to use Spotify you shouldn’t have to pay for it.


By: Johan Östberg

Essay 3 - Music 'myth'

I think it is too hard to imagine how the music industry will look like in the next decade. Who knows what new technologies will be invented and new business models will be created for the music records. Since ten years ago, no one can imagine we can watch free videos, programme, movies, TV channels, etc on the internet TV software like PPstream, Xunlei Kankan, Sky TV, etc, in China. And the important thing is that they are legal software.
According to BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4718249.stm), research suggested, people who illegally shared music files online are also big spenders on legal music downloads. That seems very interesting, but it is the fact. I think the record company should be happy when they see this fact, they should not complain about free download too much. The study found that regular downloaders of unlicensed music spent an average of £5.52 a month on legal digital music. This compares to just £1.27 spent by other music fans. "The research clearly shows that music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers," said Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question.
All these evidences showed that the record companies should find a good way to change the threats to opportunities. Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.
As a consumer, in my opinion, free music is absolutely a good thing for consumers. No matter what ages, sex, habits, nationalities they are. And for the unknown artists without a record contract, and narrow independent record companies, internet offers a perfect platform for them to promote their works. The reason is obvious. But I also do not think the big record companies, megastars will lose in the future, they must find ways to get money. Spotify could be one of the solutions for the big record companies and probably this kind of business model will last for some time (5 years, 10 years…). Or maybe the situation for the music industry in the next decade will be still complex and a mixture. Both free download and paying download will exist, but the difference is the free download become legal. For example, the record companies can offer certain number of music for the consumers to download freely as a reward of buying the megastars’ concert tickets.

I guess the tendency for music industry is downloading music by paying for it. Consumers can get some free music on the internet by big record companies or some related companies’ marketing campaign. Personally speaking, I would rather pay for the record and get the pure music than get free music with ads or some other interruptions along with the music. Think about the time before free download music from the internet, we all paid money for the music tapes or CDs without any complains.


By Qiong Jia

Essay 2 - social media and the quality issue

No one can deny the benefits that social media brings to us, but at the same time, it also makes troubles for us. In my opinion, quality issues are not only related to those social medias which contents are consumer generate, but also to the new media such as Google search engine. Nowadays, we can get much more free content from the web, which is along with the ads, for instance, Google is probably the most prominent example. I think there is no big difference between the traditional media and new media in terms of business model. When you search something from Google, you get a relevant ranking list which is basically ranked by how much money you pay for Google. I really found troubles in searching information from Google, which is normally I do not find the most relevant information I want on the top of the list; instead, some advertisements are on the top of the list. So, for some social Medias which contents are customers contribute, the other customers can monitor the quality and accreditation; but for Google search engine, who will control the quality of the content which the customers search for besides Google itself.

Recently, I read news about the biggest search engine website Baidu in China, which blocked the enterprises’ information on its website if this enterprise ranked on the top of the list and do not pay money for Baidu. At the same time, if there is any negative news for the company, the company can pay money for Baidu, and Baidu will block the bad news from the search engine users. I can‘t prove if this was a trustful news, but if it was true, what a terrible news it would be!

For the social media which contents are consumers generate, such as Youtube, which are along with the quality issues. As Benkler talked and illustrated in his book, there already have many ways to solve it; peer review ex-post is one example from Slashdot. I won’t give more examples about how these websites make their strategy to control the quality of the content. What I want to say is, the internet was supposed to be freedom. For those social media which contents are generated by customers, if they make so many rules in order to control the content quality, will they lose their customers for those who are considered bad content quality providers or for those who think it is so inconvenient? If the answer is yes, what will these social media do then?

By Qiong Jia

The quality issue

We are in a point were professionally created content is not all people want. We have been exposed to so many ads (by them) that i personally think that there is something behind everything they say, they always have a back thought; that i can never get their real opinions. In some way i thinj it would be impossible for them, they have to have their bosses and companies future in mind, they cant say and express themselves however they want, in a way that every individual person can in communities and blogs. Another thing that i came to think about is that we are sick of being fed with the information brands give us, the information they want us to have, the user generated content has opened out eyes and minds, we demand more, we demand answers, we expect a dialogue with brands, something that we cannot get from the traditional media. I think that our media consumption is driven by content, therefore is it important that some contents, for example Wikipedia is kind of professionally created, maybe i can with other word call it editorialized content, by which we mean it's selective content were irrelevant content is been taken away. On of the negative things with user generated content is that even with help of this professional gatekeepers we still cant be sure which information to choose or trust. it is like being tossed in the middle of an ocean to find a fish, and you don’t even know if the fish is really a fish or just a worm. Ok now my comparison wasn’t the best but i think i got my point out.

I believe in user generated content, i believe that everyone of us together can create a valuable content just as the professional ones but in a different way. Even though user generated content can be created by anyone accessing the internet the pros are much greater than the cons. For example who are we more likely to trust when im searching for reviews on things, a blogger or The Wall Street Journal? User-generated content is far more effective at some things but the credibility of the truth are much higher, great for entertaining us with opinion and telling us which hotel to stay at. With user generated content we have more options, more niche content to choose from depending on our specific interests. And this is just the biggining of an era that know no limitations.

Essay 2 Social Media and Traditional/mass Media

Social media are very different with mass media, such as newspapers, television, radio, and magizine, etc. Comparing with those mass media, social media are more convenient and cheaper to let anyone to publish or access information.

The common aspect of social media and mass is both of them can reach from the niche audiences to large size audiences. But for most ordinary people, the social media are available to them with little or no cost, meanwhile the mass media is always controlled by more profit organizations. Mass media need more specific skills to do it, it means it need more time and expense for production, but social media has very simple process, anyone can learn to use it fast and just can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response.

And also through using the social media, people can digitally identify themselves, this break the limitation of being a carbon-based life-form. Social media give everyone the opportunity to express themselves. And social media can help scale this to new heights, for instance a person now on MySpace may can have thousands upon thousands of friends. Now a person can express him/herself with multidimensional, multimedia depth via text, photos, audio and video to realize this.For mass media it's not possible to develop personal product, since it's hard for the mass media to follow every individual audience to develop the product just suit for him/her. But social media can achieve this.

But there is one crucial thing that social media industrvy have to notice the quality of the products. Since as the above mentioned, the cost and skill are not big concern for social media industry, the entering barriers are so low, the quality of content is hard to control. How to control the quality uncertainty, maybe the we should consider the anonymity is a source of it. In social network, anyone can publish or access information anonymity. So with the anonymity, it is harder to identify who is doing what and why. There will always be ill-intentioned individuals and groups will outnumber the bad issue through the social media network. For instance, the Youtube provides anonymity in a weird way, because even if thousands of people see someone's video, those viewing it don’t necessarily know anything about them. The good side is anyone can publish his/her opinion without fearing, but the bad side is anonymity breeds divisiveness may well harm the long-term success of a valuable idea, and brings in some low quality contents.

However I believe with any technology, there are benevolent uses and malevolent ones. So finally there always are some create a vibrant, transparent, and effective social media service can be built. For example now the Wikipedia already have some ways to successfully encourage the production of quality content.

By Wang, Yiqing

Essay Two – Trust Issues and Old versus New

I have decided to compare old media (mass media such as newspapers and television) to the “new kind” (different social medias as Wikipedia, YouTube or blogs). I think that it is important to note that the older generations (over 50 years old) don’t seem at all interested in these features – it is mainly a phenomenon for the young (except for maybe Carl Bildt). A lot of older people I have talked to can’t even imagine why someone would want to write a blog and even less why someone would want to read one. So I think that the first thing to note here is that social media is almost exclusively for the young.

This is important to remember when discussing credibility issues and such, because it seems that it is the young who is the most negative towards the old media. In another course I took they had invited a sociologist who had studied the habit of Swedish teenagers and her conclusion was that the two institutions the young trusted the least was the school (teachers) and the media (journalists). I find that a bit scary, don’t you?

The big difference between finding information on a random blog and in a newspaper isn’t the content per se. No, the real difference is accountability. If a journalist has written something that is wrong or no suiting there is a publisher who will take responsibility for that. Hence the threshold is much higher in established media. The old media also has reputation to think about, since they actually have a brand to nourish. Therefore the old media providers have something to lose if they publish information that later turned out to be untrue. So, now we have identified two major differences between old and new media, accountability and credibility, but there is one last aspect that needs to be taken under consideration – the one of agenda. When it comes to old media most of us know – and if we don’t it is quite easy to find out – what the brands represent (for instance SVT is un-biased, DN is liberal and so on), but there is no equivalence when it comes to blogs. You have no idea what the writer’s agenda is and therefore it makes it hard top value the information that he or she supplies.

Lastly there is one thing I would also like to point out. That is that the anonymity of the web is spreading to traditional media. We see “sources” and “informants” without names almost daily nowadays and I think that is a way for the old media to try to keep up with the faster moving web. In my point of view this isn’t something good. I think that it compromises the three aspects mentioned above and makes the difference between old and new media fuzzy.

By: Johan Östberg

Me and social media – my relationship to social media technologies

I still remember the feelings of my first time to use QQ (Chinese chatting software similar as MSN) chat with some strangers in the virtual world. You do not know what he or she looks like, how old is he or she, where he or she come from, etc, even there is some descriptions about this person, but it is still suspect. It was such a funny thing you talked with people from different part of the country, make friends with them; and even some of the people get married at last. These things are often heard from my friends. Around1999 to 2002, for my experience, “internet amour” was so popular among teenagers in china. Boys and girls started looking for their lovers from the internet. Some girls in the south China spent one day and night by train come to north china, in order to meet their boyfriends. I also experienced to meet with a boy who I knew from the internet. I did go to the place where we should meet, but I did not have the courage to talk to him, instead just watching him walk away. After that, we never talked to each other. I cannot explain why I did that, it is just weird.
And after graduated from high school in China, I went to Europe to continue my university study in 2002. At that time, it was so inconvenient to contact with my family and friends in China. I do not know what they are doing, how they look now, what is new for them, and so on. I miss them very much, and feel lonely. Since the new social media appeared, for instance, MSN space, I can follow their updates; know what happen to them, I did not feel I am far away from them anymore. We share our information on these social medias, leave a message at anytime. More communications are created by these social medias.
And some social media like xiaonei.com (similar as facebook), it helps me find my old friends and classmates who I did not keep in touch with for some years. It is really a big surprise when you find these people by these social medias and say thanks to the people who invent these technologies.
As I talked above, thanks to the social media technologies, which make my life more dramatic, convenient, and comfortable.

By Qiong Jia

Me and social media

When I think about how much I use the internet, I get amazed, for me internet is necessary as the air that I breathe. I feel paralyzed if I don’t have access to it. When I say paralyzed, I’m speaking from experience, every time I travel to Iran I realize that the world I’m living here in Sweden is not the same world when I’m in Iran. Here the first thing I do when I wake up is to turn on the computer and surf the net, and with surfing the net I don’t mean waiting for one page to open for half an hour (which I have to do in Iran), every information I need I get from the internet, whether it’s the weather or the news. In Sweden I know that I can write to a person (email or msn ) and I get reply most of the times immediately, but when I tell this to my friends in Iran they can’t understand the point of communicating by emailing. With this technology I’m always one click away from doing everything that I can, from reaching my goal, this advantage I usually take for granted, sometimes I even get annoyed when I’m two clicks away instead of one. But one of the cons with today’s social medias technologies is that it makes us lazy,10 – 15 years ago, on a Friday night when we wanted to watch a movie we all took a nice walk to the video store , stood there 15 minutes maybe, chose a movie and then bought some snacks and went home. This was a whole experience for the family to be a part of, no one wanted to miss the chance of going to the video store with the rest of the family, these days all the movies are one click away from being downloaded, and it is very clear to see that, there is no fun experience choosing the movie and then watch it. Another thing that I’ve been thinking about is that before when people wanted to social with each other when use to put up a date to meet. Now most of the socializing is through the different medias which prevents us from socializing in person and taking a part of each other’s lives in person, we get lonelier as the time pass by, we talk to the medias instead of a real person. But it is to mention wheatear the social medias are good or bad they are here to stay and the only thing we can do is to accept it and adjust our lives so we can benefit from it.


By Tala Raha

Me and social media – my relationship to social media technologies

I remember the first time I browsed the internet. It was in my parents’ house, we had just bought our first computer with additional modem. That must have been at least fifteen years ago. The modem squealed and it was so slow it was almost unusable. I don’t think anyone of us could imagine the impact the internet would have on our lives today.

I also remember a hot day in the end of the summer in Madrid 2001 and reading about a terrorist attack that would forever change the world. That feeling of unreality is something I will never forget.

And I remember all those emails from friends and family which has helped me so much when I have been abroad. Regardless of my state of mind, may it be joy or sorrow those emails helped me through times and have brought me closer to a lot of people. And that’s not even close to the whole story. I wonder if I will ever forget all those nights playing poker and chatting with other players having nothing to think about except for the next hand being dealt and which Bruce Springsteen record I would listen next.

As you can see social media has been a big part of my life – and probably in every young Swede’s. But if someone asked if I could live without it, what would I answer? Here’s the funny thing. Although I am online probably more than six hour a day on average I would answer “Yes, of course I could manage without”. And I think that a lot of people would say the same thing. Are we all fraud? Do we underestimate the impact of social media in our lives? Yes I think to some extent we do. Even though certainly most of our fellow humans have sufficed without it, we in the Western world have grown accustomed to it, specially the little things. I can’t even remember the last time I handed in my bets in a store. To me that is as far away as Elvis and M.A.S.H.. I find it even more difficult the last time I bought a trip or checked a timetable in hard copy. So, the answer to the question above is that I would probably manage without the internet, but it would be a more boring life, where things would take longer time then I am used to now. In short I would get a whole lot more frustrated (taking under consideration that I can get very irritated on my browser, which means a lot…).


By: Johan Östberg