I need your help!

It's the last week of my degree (dun dun dun!) and I'm back. I'm here, cap in hand, asking for your help.

It's really very simple.

All you need to do is read out the text below, in your best speaking voice, record yourself (either video or audio - whichever you prefer) and send it to me. It will form part of a video I'm putting together for my final project hand in. Please help! Many thanks, Keira.

Ps. I realise that files may be too large to attach to an email (my email address is however akidfromkibble@googlemail.com incase needs be). If you post the video to YouTube I have a very nice, mildly illegal video grabber so I can snatch it from YouTube's clutches.

Here's the text:

Its 30 years later and we’ve seen a lot of changes. Most of the population are computer literate. Those who were in their 50s at the birth of the internet are 80 or 90 now. The majority of them learnt how to use the internet for work. And for a long time now education has been largely web-based.

Since the dawning of the internet we have seen a change in the way we are entertained. As free content began to pour onto the internet, nothing the media industries or government could do stopped people from sharing their ideas, the ideas of others, information and skills.

As media industries began to claw back their copyrighted material the general public began to abandon traditional recorded entertainment including recorded music, television and books. Increasingly people turned to each other for entertainment – posting free amateur film, music and written word. Collaboration was the norm and authorship became increasingly irrelevant.

Masses of information could be stored and accessed through cloud computing. Most people need only carry small devices or epaper to access the entire internet and all of their personal files. Increasingly in public there is barely need for a personal device as our streetscape becomes more and more technologically advanced.

Music in the Clouds

Oops.

Let's start again. Ironic that in the project about Cloud Computing I would neglect my blog. Sorry mate.

The Internet changes things. That we know.

As discussed in my dissertation (see previous posts >>>) the music industry is a good case study of this. It's nature of being fairly small files meant that it was the forerunner in a lot of ways.

We had Napster, we have Limewire - these early music distribution tools use open sourcing to share tunes between users, using the new and popular MP3 format.

"I have this great software, you can have it for free!"

"Oh, wow, thanks! I'll share all my music for free and everyone can have everything for free and be HAPPY!"

But the music industry weren't keen on this model - of course they weren't. Traditional record labels were loosing millions of pounds/dollars/yen in this. After all, it was Piracy. Sharing records, while technically not legal, was always accepted. It was so small scale it had no real effect. A massive file sharing network meant the industry had to sit up, take notice, and clamp down.

So hey, great idea from Apple, who with their iPods were largely responsible for the transfer of music to MP3, the iTunes store was born.

"Look guys, you can now legally BUY music on the internet! How neat is that?! It's cheaper than records, and virus free!" "Oh cool, I respect that the artists should be paid for their work. That's cool. I'm in."

And most people were in. Of course piracy will never completely disappear, but with a lot of high profile court cases people were put off. They didn't want to steal music - it was simply the only option to begin with.

And hey... what's this? Oh, it's Spotify. Now there is a nifty idea.

"Hey, you can download this software for free (for a limited time only, or be invited by a subscribed user). Then you can access the music we have (limited access for free users, premium members get all our tunes for a small fee.)" "So I don't have to store it on my hard drive? Awesome! 18GB of music was really slowing up my computer! And I can access it anywhere I have an internet connection? Well with my iPhone, that's EVERYWHERE. Magic! And if I want it for free I just have to listen to a couple of (very smart) adverts every few songs? Hey, I can do that. Thanks!"

So we can see how music on the cloud has progressed from

1) Napster - free software, free to the user, accessible by everyone, illegal

2) iTunes - free software, small pay-per-download fee, accessible by everyone, legal

3) Spotify - free software, free to the user (paid for with ads) or small subscribtion, accessible by everyone (because the users don't OWN the files), legal

We need to watch for stage 4, when the music industry works out how to keep selling us singles, instead of just making a few bob off of Spotify. Spotify must be a threat to them. They are big and strong and angry.