Music Investigation

SPOTIFY


Spotify is a peer-to-peer music program that allows the instant play of a song, or a number of songs with little or no delay for buffering. Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. Although the music isn't available for use outside Spotify, the user can purchase the music for a small charge, much like downloading. It is available in most European countries for free, but most users will have to supply a subscription to the program. It helps music sales as well as publicity. If a certain band is unknown compared to another band, then they can utilise the program to enhance their popularity and promote their songs. Technological convergence happens too, with the availability to download the songs, or complete albums legally. This is one of the programs that you can legally download high quality music. This still affects music charts such as UK Top 40, and also still raises money for the program, band, and also Spotify itself. Using figures, we can compare how many people use the site, or other sites to people that buy music from shops like HMV or Zavvi stores (although a lot of these units have closed down).


LAST.FM


Last.fm is an UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations, the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") through a plug in installed into the user's music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user's profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites. Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it. Last.fm claims over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m US). This boosts the popularity of bands that put their music on this site, increases the revenue of both the site and the music industry and also enhances all popularity. gain, similarly to Spotify, it is a site where it is legal to download tracks. This is another way of boosting revenue and also shows that there are other ways and more modern and easier ways to consume music.


SUBCULTURE

Subculture is a group of people that have formed under another culture. A subculture can be recognised and defined by the following:

1. through their often negative relations to work

2. through their negative or undecided relation to class

3. through their association with territory (the 'street', the 'hood, the club, etc), rather than property

4. through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging

5. through the exaggerated ways they choose to dress

6. through their refusal of the conformities of ordinary life.

Genres of music are closely related to social groups and also cultures. The types of music people listen to and enjoy often heavily relates to this. If there is a large amount of one group, the music industry needs to make sure it sufficiently targets this specific group. Audience is again based on cultures and social groups. This aids and also categorises audience making research less generalised and more in-depth.


DRM

The DRM is the Digital Rights Management. They control the legalising of music downloads and also control rights to different websites/applications such as Spotify. It prevents copyright infringements and the reproduction or disallowed use of music pieces. This helps the music industry gain control of abusers, and also helps artists and music companies maintain their status and also their original pieces. Without the use of copyright and other preventing software, there would be little or no control and it would cost millions of pounds to repair. This helps audience research because of the constant use of illegal downloading sites such as LimeWire, and helps other companies to stop the illegal downloading and once again gain control.