Spotify vs Music Artists

How do older media, such as the radio, serve as a template for a Wireless Culture? 

Streaming sites like Spotify are the new era of music, following the great influence that radio has had. It allows users on demand access to their favorite artists right at their fingertips without needing a hard copy or paying for each individual download. Spotify and other music streaming companies are rising fast to combat piracy, but some artists argue that the payout is not fair.EndFragment

I believe that the way artists were paid traditionally through older media forms such as CDs and especially the radio has served as an example for the newer streaming industry to pay artists. Artists used to get paid much more for a play on the radio or for a CD sold than the fraction of a cent that they receive with a listen on a streaming site like Spotify. 

The biggest problem with the math battle going back and forth between streaming sites and artists is that the radio play would go out into the public for any listeners to listen to for free, whereas streaming sites leave the song at the free will of the on demand user. Because this has never been an option for consumers before and the closest to it was when they paid for each individual download of a song, artists and streaming sites are caught in a tug of war over the revenues. 

Another factor from the radio industry that is not incorporated into streaming sites is Performance Rights Organizations or PROs. Radios would actually pay fees for music directly to PROs who would then take care of the distribution to artists, songwriters, and labels. This is because a play on the radio is considered a public performance since listeners to not pay to hear the song. While a user paying for a Spotify subscription and listening to a song directly through their head phones is far from a public performance, maybe a third party similar to a PRO could be the answer to this battle.

Sources:

Bacle, A. (2014, November 3). Taylor Swift vs. Spotify: A timeline. Retrieved February 28, 2018, from http://ew.com/article/2014/11/13/taylor-swift-spotify-timeline/

Consor, K. (2014, August 6). What You Didnt Know About Radio Royalties. Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://blog.songtrust.com/publishing-tips-2/what-you-didnt-know-about-radio-royalties

Forde, E. (2013, July 15). Spotify row: how do musicians make money? Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2013/jul/15/spotify-musicians-money-thom-yorke

Haynes, A. (2017, May 12). How Does Spotify Make Money? (NFLX, AAPL). Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/120314/spotify-makes-internet-music-make-money.asp

 Singleton, M. (2017, June 15). Spotify now has 140 million active users. Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15807826/spotify-140-million-active-users

Radio: Amazon's ALEXA in Radio

        The Question of the Week was "How does radio technology serve as a template for wireless culture?" My claim in response to this question was that wireless technologies like Digital Voice Assistants utilize the same fundamental technologies that initially developed radio. These same technologies that sparked radios popularity and made it the first form of mass media are integrated
into the wireless technologies of today, just in a more mature, advanced and digital fashion.
        My first tactic in establishing this point was to emphasize the traditional form of radio,
terrestrial radio and highlight how this now simple technology, then changed the world and out communication methods by its usefulness the world of politics and media culture through military use and radio stations within the home and consumer cars. I then introduced the idea of wireless digital assistants as whole to make the transition from traditional radio to my specific case study on Amazon's ALEXA more seamless. In acknowledging other digital assistants like Apple's Siri, Samsung's Bixby and Google's own Assistant, the variances in radio technology that are integrated are much more evident when looking at digital assistants as a whole.
       In introducing ALEXA, I focused on the capabilities integrated within the technology.
Things like the power of turning on the coffee maker, changing the temperature in a room, or giving live game stats all in response to the sound of a human voice. Once these capabilities were acknowledged, I could then further explain the technology behind them and how they exhibit traditional components of radio. Through the use of Ultra-Wide Bandwidth radio technology (a form of digital radio), ALEXA is able to access the digital spectrum of information for efficiently. The voice component of ALEXA's capabilities are also a result of digital radio technology adapting and advancing to respond to voice, which ALEXA's voice database is always expanding through increasing interactions with everyday human speech.
     In concluding my presentation, I emphasized a few points of how ALEXA's ability to grab from the digital spectrum, and connect to a multitude of other household appliances like televisions and air conditioning units are made possible by foundations that fundamental radio was built from. I then provided a different perspective of radio and its place in our society now defining it as a technology that shaped our advances, but it now instead being shaped by the consumer, and tailored to the consumer.

Sources:
Smith, S. (2014, November 10). Radio: The Internet of the 1930s. Retrieved February 27, 2018, from http://www.americanradioworks.org/segments/radio-the-internet-of-the-1930s/

This article is a component of the larger project "The First Family of Radio" podcast on the Roosevelt family

D. Raychaudhuri and N. B. Mandayam, "Frontiers of Wireless and Mobile Communications," in Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 100, no. 4, pp. 824-840, April 2012. doi: 10.1109/JPROC.2011.2182095
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6155060&isnumber=6170937

Purington, A., Taft, J. G., Sannon, S., Bazarova, N. N., & Taylor, S. H. (2017, May 06). Alexa is my new BFF: Social Roles, User Satisfaction, and Personification of the Amazon Echo. Retrieved February 27, 2018, from https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3053246

Gugliotta, G. (2007, May 31). How Radio Changed Everything. Retrieved February 27, 2018, from http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/tireless-wireless

Amazon Alexa and Echo Devices. (n.d.). Retrieved February 27, 2018, from https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07456BG8N?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=243980088155&hvpos=1t1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16746863090054181525&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027906&hvtargid=kwd-300722486316&ref=pd_sl_1hzxtoww8c_e

Alexa commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-8DQALGt

Porcino, D., & Hirt, W. (2003). Ultra-wideband radio technology: Potential and challenges ahead. IEEE Communications Magazine,41(7), 66-74. doi:10.1109/mcom.2003.1215641

Dunn, J. (2016, August 26). Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa look poised to explode. Retrieved March 04, 2018, from http://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-assistants-siri-alexa-growth-chart-2016-8

Straubhaar, J., & LaRose, R. (2015). Media now(9th ed.). Place of publication not identified: Cengage Learning.

Bridging The Gap Between Traditional Radio and Streaming Services

The question of the week regarding radio was “How do older media serve as a template for a Wireless Culture?” My claim was that older media do this by figuring out the basis of what works and then new media expands on that base. To establish this point, I discussed the basic forms of terrestrial and digital radios. I then explained streaming services. Following this, I discussed the differences between these music platforms. This included benefits of traditional radio (terrestrial and digital) and areas of improvement to keep up with streaming services. From there, I discussed iHeartRadio. I chose to explain this service because it clearly bridges the gap between traditional radio and streaming services. This is because it has a traditional end where it streams live radio broadcasts yet also allows users to have their own playlists, discover their own music, and has plus and all access subscriptions. In my conclusion, I clarified that traditional forms of radio are still present today but are decreasing in popularity. Following the presentation, the class discussed reasons why they would care if traditional radio disappeared due to personal and emotional connections with radio stations they grew up with. My final claim was that streaming services have relied on the older medium of radio as a template but radio now must also use streaming services as a model.

References:

Clark, B. (2015, July 17). How Analog Radio Works, What's Digital Radio, and What's Next? Retrieved March 05, 2018, from https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-analog-radio-works-whats-digital-radio-and-whats-next/

Harris, M. (2018, February 8). Streaming Music: How Does It Actually Work? Retrieved March 05, 2018, from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-streaming-music-2438445

Mangum, G. (2014, September 24). Ideas on the Future of Radio: Algorithms, Radio Programming and Open Data. Retrieved March 5, 2018, from https://cmsw.mit.edu/ideas-future-radio-algorithms-radio-programming-open-data/

Meneses, J. P. (2012). About Pandora and other streaming music services: The new active consumer on radio. Observatorio (OBS*), 6(1), 235-257.

Nielsen Holdings PLC. (2013, November 12). Extra Terrestrial: Consumers Still Tuning In To Traditional Radio Despite Out-of-This World Competition. Retrieved March 05, 2018, from http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2013/extra-terrestrial-consumers-still-tuning-in-to-traditional-radio.html

Quain, J. R. (2014, July 25). Why streaming could be local radio's salvation. Retrieved March 05, 2018, from http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/07/25/why-streaming-could-be-local-radios-salvation.html