My Term Research Project

For my term research project/presentation, I wrote about New Media and its effect on marketing modern music. This mainly concerns the internet and how it has broadened the marketing capability of music. I concentrated on new media monster MySpace, and a newer website, iLike. MySpace lets musicians or bands create their own personal pages, free of charge. The pages contain biographies, pictures, as well as blog posts and up to 6 streaming songs. iLike is similar to that of MySpace, but lets fans interact with one another, and network with those who have similar tastes in music to theirs.

The overall conclusion of my project was that the Internet has really opened up the possibilities for musicians to develop their image and get it out to the world. The Internet helps spread the word out faster about your music, and brings the musician closer to the fan.

Old v. New

With all this talk about New Media, you might be confused with what New Media is as opposed to "old" media. Here are some major differences:

Old Media are things such as television, radio, and newspapers. These are ways of communication whose influence only affect a certain geographical area. For example, you couldn't pick up a physical copy of New Yorks Newsday or Daily News in Chicago. You won't be able to watch the same news anchors on channel 5 on TV in Florida. You will only be able to see them in New York. Old Medias messages are only a one way conversation too. If you read an article and want to express your opinion about it, you talk to those around you about it.

New Media is the opposite. New Media technologies such as blogs and newspaper websites allow you to read your cities news wherever you are, as long as you are connected to the internet. New Media also makes spreading your opinion around the world instantaneous. If you think a post on a blog is a good read, you can post a comment. If you think a video on YouTube is terrible, you can post your opinion. New Media gives everyone who wants to express themselves a voice to do so.

Advice to Baruch College

If I were given the opportunity to tell the people that run Baruch how to improve the school using methods of New Media, I would first tell them that maybe a few blogs ran by administrators and professors could help newcomers to the school. A blog ran by the advisement center could help students choose which classes to take in the upcoming semesters, which classes close up the fastest during registration, etc. There could also be blogs written by current students and alumni on student life. These could go from telling students where the best spots for food and hanging out around the school are, or giving advice on how to handle the college workload, which many students (including myself) have problems with. I think the start of school-ran blogs could help students prevent the confusion that comes with the rat race that they call CUNY.

The Effect of New Media on Society

Society today is filled with concepts, ideals, and other aspects of which are affected by New Media. One way I think it has affected us all is the way we look at entrepreneurship. I know all of us have wished we came up with the idea for Google, Myspace, Facebook, or any other website whose concept isn't that far fetched, and are now worth billions of dollars. New Media such as blogs have empowered us all in that anyone can sign up, and share their opinions, thoughts, and writing with the entire internet community. It has affected the laws that we have in our country, beginning with Napster and whether it is legal or illegal to share music and other forms of entertainment over the internet with one another. We have had to create and modernize laws to these new creations don't end up with their creators and users in jail. Society will have to adapt to these new technological institutions that continue to be created and affect us in our everyday lives.

Checking Out Some Social Networking Sites.

Personally, I like to spread my procrastination time between iTunes, Facebook, and my bands Myspace page. When I first signed up for facebook, the layout was very straightforward, and not used for quizzes, games, and all this other application stuff. Now since it has been sold away to become a corporation, ads and the like appear all over the website. I use Facebook as a means to talk with people I usually don't see everyday, joke around with my friends, and goof on funny pictures of them. Facebook has helped me find people (and them in finding me) I haven't seen since elementary school. It is awkward at first, but its nice to see some familiar faces you haven't seen in years.

As a musician myself, Myspace in an invaluable tool that I can use to promote my bands music, post bulletins telling people about our upcoming shows, post videos, and communicate with booking agencies and other companies whose services I can use. The personal page I have set up on Myspace, I find myself not using or logging into quite as often anymore. I find Facebook a lot more enjoyable to waste time on, not having to load everyones gigantic page with a billion pictures and songs playing at once, or deal with fictional display names.

Social Networking and Virtual Worlds

In the past few years, social networking over the internet has boomed to become incredibly popular, not only with the younger generations, but everyone. The two most popular social networking websites currently are Facebook and Myspace. Facebook was created by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of his friends as a tool for Harvard students to communicate and keep track of each other, but obviously since then, it has grown to worldwide proportions. Not just used for college students to post silly pictures of one another, Facebook can be used by professionals to communicate with one another about their jobs, look for other employment opportunities, etc.

The other social networking monster is Myspace. Myspace can be used by businesses and artists to promote themselves. You can search for people in your area (you can do this on facebook too) and add them as "friends", to show them your page. Myspace doesn't require you to put your full name as the display, so it is harder for you to find someone if they don't have their actual name in the directory.

Theres always a dark side to these new and evolving social networking technologies, as television shows such as "To Catch A Predator" have shown. Many people take advantage of naive young people who use the websites and lure them into bad situations. Hopefully in the future, these problems will be taken care of and prevented from happening, with increased security and watchfulness over the content and what goes on through these websites.

Baruch New Media - Our Class Wiki - So Far

Our class wiki is coming along very well. The section that I am contributing to is New Media in Music. I have written a paragraph on the page about the website www.ilike.com. This is a great website that you can use for finding information about your favorite artists, as well as finding similar artists according to your tastes that you put in once you choose your favorites. The big mother of all music sites seems to be Myspace, which gives artists unlimited publicity for free. Unless you are a huge famous artist who might have to pay for certain aspects of the promotion you get on the website (unfortunately I am not one of them, so I do not know for sure). I will continue to look for new media tools that concern music and make sure that I update the wiki accordingly, so that you all can read about them.