Online Music Vids

TV viewers are getting more and more likely to view content via the internet as technology has improved over the past years. Huge channels like MTV have increased the content on their websites to try and cater for the online computer user. MTV has launched its very own Overdrive media player which holds an incredible amount of music videos which can be viewed on demand. This will give YouTube a run for it's money by streaming these videos at higher qualities than YouTube which are all home recorded and uploaded by people all over the world. Not only does Overdrive offer music videos but recently uploaded content featured a live show of the Arctic Monkeys in Barcelona.

example of success purely from self promotion with new technology - Sandi Thom

Alexandria "Sandi" Thom[1] (born August 11, 1981) is a Scottish singer-songwriter from Macduff in Aberdeenshire. She released her first single in 2005 and received a great deal of publicity for webcasting her gigs from a basement in Tooting in 2006.

21 Nights from Tooting
21 Nights from Tooting was a "tour" consisting of 21 performances from the basement of her Tooting flat, from February 24 to March 16. These were recorded and then webcast. Tickets were sold, but the venue had a capacity of "six people" ("10 including the band").
The MySpace post announcing the gigs was posted in the early hours of February 22. Thom's website states that "the idea popped into her head" after her car broke down travelling from a gig in York (on the 22nd) to one in Wales (on the 23rd).
Thom states that she was familiar with webcasting, having had a show at the Edinburgh Left Bank webcasted.
Prompted by a contact from Thom's manager, news services noted Thom's promotion efforts. The audience for the first day was reportedly around 60 or 70, increasing to 70,000 (later quoted as 48,000) by the middle of the run, with viewers from Russia, the United States and Pakistan.[10].
The publicity surrounding the tour led to major label interest, with music label representatives attending the gigs in question.
Thom subsequently accepted an offer by Sony. This led to the single re-release being delayed until May, when it was released on Sony's RCA label. The news of this broke on April 3, 2006, the official signing itself being webcast. The single was placed on Music Week Daily's playlist that day. She was the first artist signed the RCA label since its reorganisation.

Controversy
Some observers have questioned how she was able to sustain production of the webcasts; critics suggest that she "could not have supported such a large audience on her webcast if she really was a starving artist". Others question the veracity of claims made about viewership. There are also questions as to the level of involvement of PR agency Quite Great. Her manager, Ian Brown, in an interview with the Guardian, asserted that the idea did indeed come from her, whilst her management and publicist claim to have conducted a large publicity campaign, including a million "virtual flyers"
Some critics accused Sony of orchestrating the campaign. Craig Logan, the managing director of RCA, denied these accusations, claiming that the label was "drawn to" Thom after hearing of the webcasting.
The Guardian's review said that it was "ironic" that she had "harnessed new technology to draw attention to the kind of pop made by her foremothers" - the single being a lament to the spirits of '69 and '77.

key terms for music and the Internet case study

mp3s - sound
mp4s - video+sound
DRM - Digital Rights Management
wi fi - wireless internet
RSS - a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts
RIAA - Recording Industry Association of America
CRB - Copyright Royalty Board
P2P - Peer to Peer networking allows people to access files from others computers depending on what privileges they will allow each other. Commonly brought up in the download arguments as file sharing.

Bebo bands - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebo#Bebo_Bands

On 11 July 2006, "Bebo Bands" was launched. On this section of the site, bands or solo artists are able to create a profile showcasing their music. Along with undiscovered talents, it has a section called "New Music Only on Bebo" linking to established artist pages including Paris Hilton, Matt Willis, Orson, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue, The Kooks, Lily Allen, and others.
The band pages include; a band member list which is similar to the friends list on a normal profile, a list of "groupies" (fans who have added the band as though it were a friend), an area for tour dates, a blog, and a list of songs which have been uploaded for playing through Bebo's media player, or to be added to other user's playlists. These songs can be grouped by the band into albums, along with cover-art. All band members can edit the content of the band profile.
Although the Bebo Band section is intended for use by musical groups, the facility is also used by many to form clubs or societies, or as unofficial fan pages for established bands.

Music in the home of multimedia

Music is now an integral part of many homes. New convergence technology, e.g. hi-fi, PC, DVD player, games consoles, and radios, has massively opened up the ability for popular music to move into the home environment. In the same way that production has been changed, the action of listening and experiencing music has also been affected. As new media technologies expand and 'improve', our universal consumption is ever-changing. The digitisation of music files has, at grass-roots level, caused this, as now music can be shared and played through anything which can read and process the series of 0s and 1s. This can have diverse affects though. People will not be going to the cinema as often as prices are constantly rising and this is putting people off, when they can sit at home and watch a film in more comfort.

democratisation of music

Music production by record companies has been adversely affected by the Internet: bands and artists no longer need a record deal to promote their music. The Internet has enabled free publicity and this extends to record production itself. With the development of technology, recording has become democratised: paying a lot of money to a professional recording studio is no longer necessary, many bands/artists use small devices to create their own 'studio' and, on a smaller scale, some computers and mobile phones now include recording software. Once the desired effects have been made, a band can promote themselves using their websites, generally on MySpace, and offer free downloads or snippets as a way to promote themselves. The cost of advertising has been significantly subsidised by the fact that artists can promote their stuff for free. It solves financial problems for the band and can even allow bands to set up their own record distribution network. An example of this is the band Enter Shikari, who set up their own indepandant "record label" called Ambush Reality, which is co-owned by the band members themselves, and their friends.

success of Myspace

MySpace launches UK version
A UK version of the social networking site MySpace.com is to be launched "within the next 30 days". Around a million of its current users are based in the UK. In an interview with the BBC News website, it was staed that the first priority of the new site would be the UK music scene."Clearly the first place to go is music, so we will tap into the music scene. We're already working in the US with CD:UK which is coming over to the US, to be called CD:USA, and we're going to integrate bands from MySpace into that programme. We hope when we go back to the UK to tap into how successful that show is. Hopefully they'll want to market through MySpace and we'll tap into the local events scene, parties, clubs, artists, film makers, television producers, so I think it's going to grow pretty rapidly."

MySpace's music section has helped many amateur bands progress eg. the Arctic Monkeys, who owe a lot of their success to the publicity that MySpace generated for them.

Lily Allen on MySpace
'It's such a powerful thing, to send your stuff out there and get such a massive response' (singer Lily Allen on how she's profited from airing her music on MySpace.) 'I'm constantly getting harassed for new material. It's amazing really,' says Lily Allen, MySpace's latest star. Amazing, because she's yet to release a single record. But since joining the MySpace community last November, things have been snowballing for the 20-year-old Londoner, whose ska-driven musings on life, love and selfloathing have seen her acquire numerous online fans.It's not hard to see why. Lily's music has the same qualities which made the Streets' debut album, Original Pirate Material, so ground-breaking - honesty, ingenuity and humour, all wrapped up with a catchy melody.