Investigation and Report of Findings

Findings:

Ad-supported music distribution online is a viable business model, but not all service are turning a profit.

Many new business have been launched in the past 3 years.

Consumers are generally willing to accept advertising, if the service is free.  Advertising online is much less frequent than traditional radio.

Survey results:

Sample size was 66 college students.

68% have paid to download, 32% have never paid. This is in line with IPSOS market breakdown of the roughly 30-35% who are totally unwilling to pay for downloads.

About half of respondents admit to downloading music illegally in the past month, only 12% say they have never done it.

Nearly 2/3 of respondents have used Myspace Music and Pandora. Less than 10% of respondents have never used streaming music.

To the question “Does advertising discourage you from using free music websites?” 82 percent said no.

78% of people choose a playlist based on genre or artist. We expected a greater emphasis on personalization and sharing, but less than 10% have listened to a station that was created by another user have listened to a station that was created by another user.

62% say that the ability to share their playlist is not at all important.

Most Satisfying:

Free:                                                                     24

Finding new artists                                          6

Accessible anywhere / immediate           4

Legal                                                                      3

Don’t have to select playlist                        1

Nothing                                                                2

Least Satisfying

Ads/interruptions*                                         26

Lack of selection                                               6

Bandwidth                                                          4

Can’t download                                                4

Giving in to the man                                       2

Sound quality                                                    2

*Different justifications for disliking advertising:

Intrusive/ Pop-ups

Takes up bandwidth

Cannot be skipped

Other Services identified by respondents:

Imeem.com, playlist.com, newgrounds.com, cdbaby.com, jango.com, Grooveshark, DigitallyImported, StreamingSoundtracks, Musicovery, rhapsodym

Research question:

For consumers unwilling to pay for music, is the advertisement-supported model of digital music distribution satisfying enough to stop illegal file-sharing?

Answer:

Probably not for most.  45% of respondents admit that they’ve still done it within the past month.

Although about 20% of respondents have not downloaded illegally, many people are still unsatisfied.

85% say that the advertisements themselves are not sufficient to discourage use, but they still have problems with intrusive advertising.

Keeping in mind that not all of these serves will prove to be sustainable business models, the sites that are most likely to succeed in the long term will be the ones that can provide advertising platforms that don’t bother users.

U.S. Newspaper Circulation

Perez-Pina’s article on dwindling newspaper circulation wasn’t shocking to me, although it was very telling of the current state of the newspaper industry. For my Eng 305 class, I did an ethnographic research project on an AP writer who worked in the Charleston capitol building reporting on the legislative session. His office, a suite that several state and national papers shared, was mostly filled with empty desks that used to be occupied by smaller paper staff writers, such as the Montgomery Herald. These papers can now only afford to occasionally send a reporter to cover a particularly important story, and mainly they will just pick up the stories from larger papers.

 

The rise of Placebloggers, and Evaluating News on the Net

Julie Fanslow wrote Community Blogging: The New Wave of Citizen Journalism for the National Civic Review. Once a placeblog has been launched, the comments and forums foster a great deal of collaboration between reporters and citizens. They are also more likely to function as “watchdog” groups than traditional journalism. Fanslow takes a generally optimistic tone about the potential value of community bloggers, and the role that they play in publicizing local issues and organizing groups for action.

We should compare these benefits with the observations in Melican and Dixon’s article, News on the Net: Credibility, Selective Exposure, and Racial Prejudice. They report that “people may select only the sources that reinforce specific political or racial beliefs.” News that comes from the internet is often derided for its lack of credibility, but the most interesting observations are about selective exposure. As people look for their own beliefs to be validated, they are building competing versions of reality. Consider conservapedia.com to wikipedia.org. The former was created specifically to counter the “liberal bias” in wikipedia. Stephen Colbert has jokingly remarked that reality has a liberal bias, but user generated content can provide information that mirrors pre-existing beliefs. Is this a downward spiral?

Traditional news media has an explicit goal of avoiding bias and striving for objectivity. But Melican argues that the Internet news may “feed the growth of racism and racial animosity” because credibility is ultimatley measured by how well the information corresponds to our pre-existing beliefs. As non-traditional news sources grow (like placeblogs), the issue of credibility and bias will become more important. One last caveat is the difference between “news” in the traditional sense, and information with an agenda; the line is becoming increasingly blurred. Just remember to read critically and check references.

Explaining why young adults use MySpace and Facebook through uses and gratifications theory

This paper was based on a focus group study asking university students how they use social networking sites to fulfill their wants and needs. The authors define personal and interpersonal goals. Social networking sites permit the creation of social media, presented in a way favorable to the user, and they can maintain distant relationships.

I think that the analogy of facebook to a yearbook was appropriate. I imagined old people looking back to facebook photos and comments from decades earlier. People will want to do it, and it might be possible. But a great deal of the value in social networking sites like facebook and myspace lies in the collection of memories.

Hopefully it all remains accessible.

Virtual Worlds

The Virtual Worlds article discusses the element of creativity that players can harness in MMORPGS, going all the way back to TinyMUD. Instead of being limited to the goals set by the game developer, players can choose a path of their own. I think this is a crucial element of modern games in general, not just MMORPGS. There will always be a place for consistent, linear games where the player is “on rails.” However, the ability for the user to shape his or her own experience with a game has led to the success of titles such as The Sims. It is interesting to watch as games continue to become enabling devices that give users the tools to be creative in their own sandbox environment.

Another topic the article brought up was the subscription-based service that Ultima Online introduced. Until reading the article, I hadn’t though about how much of the video game industry is concerned with subscriptions or purchases after the initial buying of the game. In other words, there is a lot of money to be made even after a customer pays full price for a game. Downloadable content and expansion packs are alternatives to subscription-based content. Rock Band and Guitar Hero, for example, post new songs every week for players to purchase and download. This  is a motivating factor for game designers to make a quality product that players will want to continue playing well after their initial purchase.

Readings 1-2

“The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008″ illustrates how important the internet is becoming as a souce of campaign news. The most important statistic reported in the article is that and unprecedented 55% of the entire adult population went online to follow the 2008 campaign. In addition to that, 45% of all internet users watched some video related to the campaign, and 18% of users interacted with other users by posting on message boards or forums. The internet has now become as important a source of campaign news as newspapers – and more important than radio.

I was certainly one of the users who kept up with the campaign through the internet. Often I used CNN’s website for convenience… and because I didn’t have cable. The article points out that a lot of internet users enjoy sites that offer perspective – in other words, often, ‘bias.’ I try to stick with the most objective sources that I can find, which can seem difficult on the internet.

“How Obama Really Did It” discusses the advantage that Obama gained in the campaign because of the way he embraced internet campaigning. His website, www.my.barackobama.com, had a great deal of thought put into it, and as a result it paid dividends by faciltating a large, connected constituency. The article points out other politicians’ forays into internet campaigning as well, such as Ron Paul’s passionate but ultimately unguided fanbase.

 

Civic Engagement and UK Political Parties on the Internet

The Pew study, The Internet and Civic Engagement, opens with the assumption that  as political activity shifts online, people who were traditionally absent from participation may be more active. Next, they point out that this assumption is false, and they carefully document how people with higher incomes and education levels are the ones who are utilizing new web-based political tools. The three political activities considered are, making a donation, contacting an elected official, and signing a petition. In all three cases, the wealthy and well educated are more active.

I think that the best observation in the report is that fact that those who are very politically active online are also the most active in traditional non-web-based political activities. Very few people are using only digital tools. Although the web is a tool that opens the possibility of greater political participation, those who are already well represented are more likely to use the tools.

McEleny’s article from July 2009 compares Obama’s success in utilizing new media to how they are being used by UK political parties. Although many ministers do not even use e-mail and are out of touch with social networking, all parties are making greater use of web tools. The report concludes that despite efforts to maker greater use of new media, all political parties could be doing more. The observation that many MPs just “don’t get it” when it comes to social networking may explain that inadequacy. If the politicians want to make effective use of new media tools, it requires greater engagement than static websites, or occasional tweets. Content has to be relevant, up to date, and interactive. Because young people make greater use of these technologies, I believe they will have an important role in the developing and utilizing online political infrastructure.

Social interactions across media

“Social interactions across media” analyzes online communication and how it fits into college students’ daily routines. It also compares online communication versus other forms of media, such as face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail communication. The article stresses that social communication is comprised of multiple forms of media. It also points out the mixed results that have come from studies that exclusively analyze overall time spent on the internet, and not other variable factors.

What I found most interesting was the finding that subjects tended to multi-task more during face-to-face communication than online communication. This goes against the common idea that online communication breeds isolation and reclusiveness. I also thought that taking “quality” of media into account was interesting. As the paper observes, an older person will not think of the internet as the same “quality” of communication as face-to-face or telephone communication.

-Whit Alexander

Dating to Divorcing: Caught in the web of love.

USA today warns readers about electronic data playing an expanded role in divorce proceedings. Almost a quarter of people surveyed confessed to snooping on someone else’s e-mail, but data relevant to divorce proceedings is often obtained from facebook or myspace pages. A family law specialist from Nashville reveals: “I’ve been in this business 27 years… People were much more careful about what they wrote down in correspondence than they are in e-mail.” Electronic evidence probably has not led to more divorces, Moses says. But it can certainly make a lawyer’s job easier.

OkCupid (an online dating service) takes a candid and snarky look in the mirror, publishing data about how race influences users to respond to first-contact emails.  They determined what response rates should be, based on compatibility, and what the actual response rates were, based on race and gender.  Their conclusion: racism is alive and well.

Two of the most striking observations are– black women respond more frequently, but get responses less frequently than other groups, and that white men get more responses than other groups. Also surprising, most groups do not admit to a strong preference to date someone of their own racial background, but more than 50% white women  do (by far the highest preference).

The article about self-presentation was the best of the bunch. It debunks the myth that many people use false or dramatically altered identities on dating sites. Fudging certain details like age or weight are common, but more socially acceptable than major misrepresentations. Because self-presented data is by definition selected, contextual information like log in times and length or quality of writing have heightened importance. The online world offers more possibilities for control over self presented data, but increases the need to establish credibility, and more heavily weights the importance small contextual clues.

week 8, readings 1 & 2

This week’s readings and YouTube clip were about Web 2.0 and education.

Education has changed over the years to go from preparing students for a lifetime on the assembly line to being prepared for a life of technological advances.

The Internet is becoming more and more prevalent in the school system. For example, teachers are using the Internet in classes by having their students blog for credit…sounds kind of familiar, huh. They are also using Instant Messaging technology to keep in touch with parents, though there are some issues with this particular technology. In order to keep from getting viruses from it, there are firewalls to protect kids and computers that make it harder for these to be used in the school buildings.

Web 2.0 is very important in today’s society, and especially in our schools. It’s helping American children catch up with the rest of the world’s school population. For example, the YouTube clip said that there are more honors students in China than there are students in the United States. (Of course, that could have something to do with the differences in population.) If we want to keep up with the rest of the world, we need to utilize the technology that we have on hand.