Radiohead, Big media and the Web

Somebody recently informed me about an increasing trend happening in the music industry. In 2007 Radiohead's album In Rainbows was available to fans online only, fans were asked to pay as much as they liked, weather that be a small fee or nothing at all for the album. In Rainbows is now unavailable to be downloaded online Radiohead was both criticized and praised for this shift away from the mainstream way of album sales.

Some thought that Radiohead had condemned themselves for such a radical move, 38% of downloaders chose to pay for the album, and it sold at an average price of $6 according to comScore records. There was also special gift sets available to buy, a discbox which "included a vinyl album, bonus CD, and assortment of other trinkets" comScore which sold for $80 US. Radiohead made an estimated 3 million out of the media experiment, if they had stuck with EMI (their former record company) it is estimated that they would have had to sell 10 times the amount of albums downloaded.

Karen Hellekson an independent scholar, outlines in her article From Irrelevance to On-Demand: Changing models of Dissemination that "...[some] hailed Radiohead for parlaying their fame and huge fan base into a successful experiment that other bands might model, with the web used to officially market and distribute a product directly to fans" And other bands did follow the commercially successful experiment, for example Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay.

Radiohead managed to make more money than they would have in staying with the record company and they also managed to increase the number of new fans. Radiohead effectively cut out the middlemen, their agent, record labels, recording companies, promoters, record shops, some transporting and storage, they sold (or gave away) directly to their target audience. This process is known as disintermediation and is becoming increasingly more and more popular in the music industry.

Radiohead is one of the few bands that have resisted the Apples iTunes store, they chose to give the power to the people rather than the power to the industry. They started the ball rolling for playing the game by a different set of rules and the Mr Big CEOs of the music industry are not happy (Warner, EMI, Sony BMG and Universal Music Group).

Offering the album free of cost to the fans washed away all rules surrounding piracy and copy writing, people were free to do what they wished, mash up re mix or reuse the music. This tactic, giving the audience the power is becoming increasingly popular in the media industry, not only in the music industry but in news production and computer programming (open source software) traditional models are being placed under continual pressure. The audience is no longer passive we have a voice, all we were looking for was our soap box... The World Wide Web.

Consumers, choose what they like from online music stores, gone are the days of the cassette and vinyl (soon to be CDs too) and out emerges rise of digital media. Digital music, book and movie stores have their advantages over physical retail stores, disintermediation - so the cost of products are reduced, recommendations- 'other customers who bought this book also bought this book' these options open new doors to consumers to tap into new subject areas or niche books that they originally may not have thought they had much interest in.

We are connected.

News, Journalists and Bloggers

Producing the News is the term genuinely applied to professional Journalists. But what is News? Depending on the person asked, there will be a different definition for every person. Some may answer News Bulletin Broadcasts for example Kerry O'Brien 7.30 report on the ABC, another may answer Who Weekly womans magazine, or somebody else may come running up shouting, 'I have some great news, theres a sale downtown lets go!'

News can be incorporated into 'fun' and entertaining programs. Entertaining news programs (Rove, The Chasers War on Everything, The Panel or Good News Week) have been aimed to inform the younger audience that do not engage in Bullitin news as easily as the older generation.

The blurring boundaires between news and entertainment has made news more popular and watchable for the younger generation. Stephen Harrington of Queensland University of Technology discusses in his paper Future Proofing Journalism: Youthful Tastes and the Challenge for the Academy that TV news can seem foreign to viewers similar to being beamed in from another planet. People will not be inclined to watch something that they find boring or difficult to understand. The language used the majority of the time seems to lack emotions and speaks a different language to ordinary every day conversation. Some may argue that news is serious and must be spoken in this tone, but instead of simply relaying analytical information, perhaps some viewers may enjoy a detailed discussion on current events, a tactic that Channel 10s The Panel makes use of. People are now seeking news in all shapes and forms. News is presented in multiple mediums and has given rise to competitive journalism of all shapes and forms.

Widespread interest in the news from a range of different audiences with different interests means that people will get their news from different sources. People want to learn, they are thirsty for knowledge. There has been a shift in mediums used to convey news, a decline in traditional news mediums and an increase in online news sources.

Audiences can publish material online without having to study an actual Journalism degree, news is now being published by the non-journalist. Inviting the nation to participate in news production engages the audience in the news. For example the devostating Boxing day tsunamis that occured in 2004, was an absolutley horrific event, few if any Journalists were there to capture footage, rather some people who lived to tell the tale recorded the event with hand held video recorders or mobile phones. Most of the footage shown on the news was from citizens with no degree in journalism, who were simply citizens on holiday/working/living.

Users are now reporting on their own experiences instead of professionals deceiding on what is newsworthy and what is not. This rise in citizen journalism, blogging, videorecording, podcasts and YouTube posts is a response to the population wanting to share experiences and swap stories. What is rubbish to one person may be breaking news to another.

Many studies have been conducted in the US on news consumption, Mundich outlines in his book Tuned out: Why Americans Under 40 dont Follow the News (2005) that there has been a rapid decrease in the amount of newspapers read everyday by 23-27 year olds. In 1997 40% of young people read the newspaper everyday
In 2002 only 19% reported reading the newspaper everyday.

Grame Turner points out in his book Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia that between 1980 and 1993 the percentage of viewers aged 18-34 watching commercial network news in the US had dropped by more than 45%.

These results show that yes there has been a decrease in interest in what is commonly refered to as traditional news mediums, but what about other sources of news?

Around this time (1990s) the world wide web was becoming increasingly more popular, and perhaps it is not that people are less interested in news as they once were in the past, but perhaps people are getting their news from other sources, publishing their own stories, becoming citizen journalists, becoming actively involved.