The Music Industry

When talking about the music industry, there are a number of key concepts which should be considered.

• Convergence - The process of multiple technologies being brought together to form a new product. When talking about the music industry, you could use the term when talking about mobile phones which enable users to download music straight to their phones. 
• Personalisation - A characteristic of many NMTs is their ability to offer users a personalised experience. It is about variety, and choice. When talking about the music industry, iPods and the iTunes store allow music to be more personalised than ever, with users enjoying the ability to buy just the tracks they want from an album and then listen to them anytime, anywhere.
• Digitisation - At its most basic form all digital material, whether it is a picture, plain text or a movie, is made up of a (long) series of 1s and 0s. This means material can be reproduced perfectly by a computer (or computer system e.g a sky+ box) and transported more effectively. In relation to the music industry, digitisation has created a massive decline in profits for a number of companies as audiences are now able to access singles and albums for free with illegal downloading software or file sharing programmes. 

Information Rich & Information Poor

See this website for a definition.

When talking about digital TV, this term can be used when talking of those who are fortunate enough to be able to keep up with NMTs and purchase TVs ready for the digital switch over (information rich), and those who are not (information poor). Not everyone can afford to keep up. Digital TV creates a divide between the information rich and information poor.

Personalisation & Digital TV

A characteristic of many NMTs is their ability to offer users a personalised experience. For example, Sky+ allows users to personalise their viewing schedule including the ability to pause live TV and automatically record their favourite programmes.

New Media Technologies - Case Study

I have chosen to focus my case study on Digital Television. When researching, i must consider the main three areas:

1. Technology - what does the technology allow? in particular, what does it allow that audiences and institutions couldn't do before. How is marketed, and who to? Who provides it, and is there any cost involved? Push/Pull technology? Is it a new media, or an old media that is changing? Who is behind this development, and why?
2. Institutions - How does his NMT allow institutions to work in new ways? (reach their audiences in new ways, make greater profit etc). How do institutions construct marketing campaigns to launch new products? Are they reacting to aundience demands or having to educate users? Are there any privacy issues, or financial losses?
3. Audience - What are audiences doing with this NMT? How are traditional experiences changing? What are audiences not doing so they can spend more time interacting with the NMTs? (statistics will help in this area) How is the technology consumed, and who by? What advantages are there for the consumer? (convergence, interactivity, quality, choice, control) Also, consider counter argument-are there any disadvantages? Is the way we interact with eachother changing?
4. Issues - What are the issues that arise with this NMT? Are there in panics over it? Or any debates? Also, are there any issues involving piracy, or any other type of illegal activity? (including copyright laws?) I will need to consider advertisers, and how they feel with channels going digital...how can the channel guarantee that their viewers wont fast forward through the adverts? Will they have to lower their prices for advertisers?
5. The Future - What is next? Where is it going? (what is the next step for digital TV, where will it take us?)

The age of permanent net revolution

John Naughton, TV reviewer turned internet guru, foresees the end of traditional broadcasting and the rise of a new media ecology.

Sunday March 5, 2006
The Observer

1. "endism" = the perspective that sees new technologies as replacing older ones.
2. "media ecosystem" = an ecosystem is never static, it's always changing, so this term refers to the belief that the changes between new and old media technologies are constant. The "organisms" in our media ecosystem include broadcast and narrowcast television, movies, radio, print and the internet.
3. "narrowcasting" = specialist content is aimed at subscription-based audiences and distributed via digital channels.
4. The difference between the internet and the web: (Information taken from This website) The Internet is a network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.
   The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
5. "Pull medium" = The web is an example of a "pull" medium. Nothing comes to you unless you choose it and click on it to pull it down on to your computer. You're in charge. "Push medium" = Broadcast TV is a "push" medium: a select band of producers (broadcasters) decide what content is to be created, create it and then push it down analogue or digital channels at audiences which are assumed to consist of essentially passive recipients.
6. Blogging software has given people the platform they need to be thoughtful, articulate and well-informed.

BARB

The BARB website gives information on what they do, but here is a basic outline:

BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) is the organisation responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences used throughout the television industry. It was set up in 1981 and commissions specialist companies to provide the television audience measurement service on its behalf - RSMB, Ipsos MORI, AGB Nielsen Media Research and TNS.

On the website, both weekly and monthly viewing summarys can be found, which show the number of viewers that watched certain programmes/channels, at certain times.

• BARB provides in-home TV viewing measurement for the UK
• This is obtained from a panel of 5,100 homes
• These homes return data from around 11,500 viewers
• Viewing by visitors to the home is included (guest viewing)
• Viewing figures are available to subscribers the morning after transmission
• PVR & VCR playback is incorporated within 7 days of transmission
• Audiences are reported on a minute-by-minute basis
• The panel design is representative of the whole of the UK
• People are recruited from all sectors of the population
• All viewing environments in the home are represented
• Multiple TV sets are measured
• BARB measures both analogue and digital delivery via cable, satellite and terrestrial distribution