Music Investigation

Informtation acquired from wikipedia

Last FM

Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries.[1] On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).[2]
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") via a plugin 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



How could this affect the future of the music industry?

Last Fm could affect the future of the music industry by enhancing it. This could relate to the easy and instant access to all genre's of music. Last Fm offers free downloadable songs to you aslong side the full tracks it provides. It can also help promote the band by having band/artist profiles and information on the band. Some say sites liek this ruin the music industry because if the yare offering free downloads its costing the bands more money and noone is buying their CD record etc... and with instand acess to thousands of songs tere is no need to buy music. This is an easy way for audiences to consume the music they like so i feel that it affects the music industry ina possitive way



Spotify

Spotify is a proprietary peer-to-peer[1] streaming music program that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums. Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. Although it is not possible to save the streamed music for use outside the application, a link is provided to allow the listener to directly purchase the material via partner retailers.[4] The program/service in its free version is only available in parts of western Europe during the ongoing beta programme although the subscription model should be available in almost all countries.


How could this affect the future of the music industry?

spotify is similar to Last fm with the instant access to thousands of artists although with spotify it doesnt offer free downloads so you cant only listening to music. Spotify allows music to be played with almost no buffering. i think that spotify also possitivly contributes to he music industry




Urban Tribes and Subcultures


Urban tribes are groups within subcultures.It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style (particularly clothing and music) may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes. Businesses often seek to capitalize on the subversive allure of subcultures in search of cool, which remains valuable in the selling of any product.[citation needed] This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society.[citation needed] This process provides a constant stream of styles which may be commercially adopted.

Music-based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process, and so what may be considered a subculture at one stage in its history—such as jazz, goth, punk, hip hop and rave cultures—may represent mainstream taste within a short period of time. Some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through the adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation.[citation needed] The punk subculture's distinctive (and initially shocking) style of clothing was adopted by mass-market fashion companies once the subculture became a media interest










(Quotation taken from Wikipedia. What does it mean, and what does it tell us about different ways of thinking about subcultures?)


“Subcultures [can be seen to be] symbolic or ritualistic attempts to resist the power of bourgeois hegemony by consciously adopting behavior that appears threatening to the establishment.[On the other hand, other theorists argue that] youth culture is inherently consumerist and integral to the divide-and-rule strategy of capitalism. They argue that [youth culture/ subculture] creates generation gaps and pits groups of youths against each other (e.g. mods and rockers), especially as youth culture is the dominant culture in the west.