Mass market ties into multiple topics discussed throughout the class, such as crowd sourcing, music streaming, and geodemographics. It relates because the mass market is the umbrella of these topics. Crowd sourcing was how google was created where pages of information were interconnected to other pieces of info. When it comes to music streaming, there are ways for the services to pick up on the type of music a person is interested in. One thing spotify does is suggesting music based on what you have saved in your playlists. This relates to mass market because it deals with finding a way to tailor you service to different groups of people. That falls into geodemographics where the digital media market is broken down by region, and they analyze what that region likes. Ultimately, the mass market is a way to generally reach people or to promote a service, but when broken down, is the key part in making sure the people get what they want. I think this is important because it allows anybody to obtain whatever information they may need, whenever they want it.

Racial stereotypes were a common theme back in the mid 20th century. One stereotype in particular was the watermelon and how it related to the blacks in a racially segregated country. What musician Duke Ellington did was create a song called “Watermelon Man,” where he found a way to turn the stereotype, and find a way to take control of it. By making a song and embracing the idea, it allowed society to realize that it was going to take more to ridicule a certain group of people. Eventually, other people started creating their own versions of the song, adding their take to it. The idea is that as music travels, if people enjoy it, it will get reused and adapted to different styles. This goes back to the topic of property rights and who has authority over a song. I don’t think it’s a problem if people take a song and repurpose it to their liking. The point of music is for entertainment, and if people want to alter it so it entertains them, so be it.

One way that music got free was through the MP3, and Witt talks about the development of the device, and how it shaped up to be a revolutionary item in the music industry. There were companies that were making CDs in which music from the record labels could be played. Then, there came the idea to compress the music and make it go digital. The problem with that was the music for mp3’s were violations of copyright due to the act of not purchasing music from the label, and rather downloading it illegally. This ultimately changed how music became available and easily delivered, streaming music was now a way of bypassing the act of purchasing songs, and listening to it that way. This lead to the problem of record labels and artists not getting paid enough for their content because people were just streaming. In today’s comparison, it would be like an artist getting mad that people only listen to their music through soundcloud or spotify rather than buying it on a certain site. Another sub-topic is payola and how artists are able to get their music heard over the radio mass amounts of times by paying the radio station. Music deserves to be free, but someone should be getting paid by it at the end of the day. The question this topic raises is, should it be okay to listen to music, but not pay for it? I think so from a music-lover standpoint. There is so much music out there to the point where if I had to pay for every song I listened to, that would be too much money for me to carry on my music habits. Yes, people should get paid for their musical content, but it shouldn’t be required for users.

Digital music theory has to do with the idea that overtime, as people start to displace themselves, the music starts to change also. Displacement is was a major engine of cultural creativity and innovation. In the 50’s and 60’s, there was a mamba craze, or a trend where music was being produced with a Latin feel to it. This goes back to the evolution of music where the location people moved to had influence on the music that was made.

Sampling is the idea of taking a song, and repurposing it. Within sampling, there are two kinds of it. The first one is when digital audio is sent and stored by a computer which then samples that audio signal. The other kind is basically the idea of repurposing sound, where you take something that was already made, and add a bit of a twist to it. This has become a common theme in modern music as artists are now taking certain riffs, hooks, or lyrics from older songs, and adding that to their music. Sampling actually ties into copyright a bit because some artists, when they hear that another artist took a sample of their music, will take legal actions. Usually, there are two sides to the idea of sampling. There are the people who get angry when they find out a new song is sampled, and there are people who believe it doesn’t matter. There are current songs that have been samples of past ones, that have been more commercially successful than the original. So to me, the idea of repurposing typically comes with the idea that someone is making that sample better, or different, by adding their own flair to it.

Copyright deals with the act of claiming rights to a certain piece of property. There are three forms of intellectual property. The first one is a trademark, or a specific mark or sign that identifies a commercial entity. The next form is the copyright where the person who writes an original piece of work is granted exclusive rights. The third form of intellectual property is patents, which apply to an invention to show who came up with the idea. These are the ways to claim the rights to something, and gives you the power to do what you wish with it. The same thing goes to record labels whenever they see someone using one of their songs without granted permission, they have the ability to file a lawsuit against them unless they are using the song for non-profit reasons. To me, copyright seems like a way to have control over what other people can use. If someone wished to use a certain song or logo at an event, they would have to get expressed permission before they could. That leaves me wondering if the people who own this property are more concerned with keeping the property to themselves, or are they willing to share it to people who wish to use it?

The digital scavenger hunt was a discussion about the first references to different genres of music, and any connotations behind it. For example, the first refences of hip-hop go back to the late 70’s where there are reports of it being first introduced in New York City. Music was typically associated with expression of your feelings or thoughts, and hip-hop was a genre where blacks were able to express themselves in a new form. The genre brought a new culture to the music industry by adding sound from DJ’s, turntables, and rapping styles. It took a while for the genre to become mainstream, but now hip-hop has turned into the most popular genre in America.

Another topic within the digital scavenger hunt is the idea of sound and how to manage it. There was the idea of reverberating and how the ceiling and floor regulate the sound. Different rooms have different sound waves due to the distance  between the two, and also the material that either the floor or ceiling were made out of. This sound impacts the way that instruments are played an placed during performances.

There was a man named Richard Stallman who created the Four Freedoms of Software. F0 is the first freedom which is to run a program for any purpose. F1 is the freedom to study how the program works, and modify it how you see fit. The next one is F2, or the freedom to redistribute copies. The last freedom is to improve the program. The way that ties into crowdsourcing is that when multiple people are given the freedom to alter a program, the credibility of it tends to become stronger. Wikipedia is the primary example of crowdsourcing. This is where anybody can create an account and alter the information on a page they wish, and make sure that what is featured on the page is the most accurate representation of what the topic is. On the other hand, you can also add whatever info you want, no matter how outrageous it is. At the end of the day, crowdsourcing has the right intentions, but without the secure regulation from the government, people can add whatever they wish.

The control of info comes with whomever has the power and possession of the info. Info is something that works best when it is being shared. That’s where the internet got started. There was a mass network of data being held in the hands of those who had it, and found a way to share it to the world. Claude Shannon mentioned in one of his writings that information has meaning, and how that can lead to the discovery of other info. By using a medium, being the internet, people now have the access to something that was once limited in availability. This is a way of saying that the internet is the communicator of the message, and the receiver is whoever wants to find that information. Even though information works best when shared, I still think there was info back then that people didn’t want to make public. The person who has the info is in control of it, so who’s to say there wasn’t information that was not put out to the public at the time?

Segregating sound refers to the racially segregated regions in America, and how there were differences in the music that musicians and record labels produced. In Miller’s book, he talks about how there were clearly defined sound and genres for whites and blacks. For example, the Folk music was a southern style variation of country music. This genre was for the amusement of the people separated from city life. On the other hand, blacks were known for having blues as their genre. The idea of the segregation of sound is a metaphor to how the music was divided, just like the country. It wasn’t until record companies started allowing races to produce music that society didn’t deem as theirs. Even though the country was racially segregated, I still don’t understand how people were so content with the idea of not letting other people enjoy and revolutionize genres of music because of the color of their skin. The mindset of America at the time was too simplistic, meaning they didn’t want any part with something if it didn’t come from their people.