User:Glacialspring/Sandbox

Internet distribution
Just gathering some material relating to this topic:

Digital rights management

RIAA

RIAA efforts against file-sharing

FAQ section on RIAA page called "for students doing reports." Contains an conservative estimate for money lost by the recording industry due to "street piracy" of $300 million and says that internet piracy inflicts even greater losses.

The Internet Debacle - an article with some good research defending the opposite view that Internet distribution does not harm artists, written by a artist. An excerpt: "As artists, we have the ear of the masses. We have the trust of the masses. By speaking out in our concerts and in the press, we can do a great deal to damp this hysteria, and put the blame for the sad state of our industry right back where it belongs - in the laps of record companies, radio programmers, and our own apparent inability to organize ourselves in order to better our own lives - and those of our fans. If we don't take the reins, no one will."

Apple on DRM

Classical music sales actually up

Nielsen SoundScan - sale-tracking service that is the source for Billboard ratings, is based on actual retail sales while RIAA tracking is based on shipments.

Tentative Internet section outline
Internet
 * file distribution - file sharing
 * iTunes, other sites you buy music off of, (and Starbucks)
 * peer-to-peer sharing (don't want to be encouraging piracy here)
 * online communities (myspace, YouTube, facebook)
 * audio compression codecs - mp3
 * piracy, efforts to combat piracy
 * artists who work on the Internet, Internet album releases (I don't want to steal RFlatt's thunder here)

The Article
The advent of the Internet has greatly transformed the experience of music, most notably through the greatly increased ease with which people can access music content and the greatly increased choice of accessible music. According to Anderson, in his book, The Long Tail: Why the future of business is selling less of more, he proposes that while the previous supply and demand economic model was based on scarcity, the new Internet model is based on abundance. In contrast to real life, space on a server costs next to nothing, so a company can afford to make their whole inventory available. Since almost everything can be put online, costumers now basically have infinite choice. This breaks the old model of supply and demand because now there is no reason not to make available products that very few people are interested in. And thus, there is now a trend of consumers' increasing consciousness of choice resulting in a closer association between choice of listening and identity as well as the creation of thousands of niches.

Another effect the Internet has had on music comes from online communities like Youtube and Myspace. Myspace has made social networking with other musicians much easier and greatly facilitates distribution of one's music. Youtube is another forum that has a large community of both amateur and professional musicians participating in posting videos and commenting. Professional musicians are also using Youtube as free promotional publishing.

Viewed differently, Youtube users are no longer content to just consume content, like downloading and listening to mp3's, but are now actively creating their own content. According to Tapscott and Williams, there has been a shift from a traditional consumer role to a “prosumer” role, a consumer who creates value and well as consumes it. Manifestations of this in music are the production of mashes, remixes, and music videos by fans.