Ben Parcell
Bachelor of Arts
Degree
Design for Digital Media
“Analysing
digital distribution of creative content within social media to design an
independent platform.”
Abstract
I
am a semi professional musician with experience of publishing and performing. I
use digital distribution via iTunes and Bandcamp and also traditional CD sales
via my gigs and online via Bigcartel. I will use my several years of building a
fan base as well statistics collected from my existing fan pages via insights
which cover a vast number of different websites.
I
therefore propose to look into effective ways of building social communities
and virtual presence with the object of distributing music in means to be a
self-sufficient recording artist.
Firstly
I will conduct a literature review about the transformation of the music
industry and how with the new format of digital media, the Mp3 in 1993 of and
increasing internet speeds from modems using dial up connections to high speed
ASDL broadband.
I
propose to carry out an original study into which I consider the main 3
existing networking websites that have music dissemination at the forefront of
their model: Facebook, MySpace, and Reverbnation to discover the positives and
negatives of each network and how that is integrated regarding access to social
media.
1. Literature Review
The
transition between physical and digital music distribution
Since the advent of MP3 technology the distribution of music worldwide
has been on a constant evolution. Digital distribution of music is the biggest
change to the traditional supply chain of music since the advent of the record.
Formerly, recording artists had to go through the chain of the record label, to
the CD pressing plant, then to the retail store and finally to the consumer and
because of leaps in digital technology an artist in 2012 can self publish,
record and release an album, E.P or single bypassing the record industry
altogether. This is known as Disintermediation,
decentralizing the power of the major record companies.
Initially when the Moving
Picture Experts Group Audio layer 3 (Mp3) format was finalised in 1993 it was an
unlicensed and copyright free platform which potentially allowed the use of
unauthorised duplication (Rose, M) which with the advent of Peer to Peer (P2P)
technology and the first incarnation of Napster in 1999 created by a University
dropout Shawn Fanning. (Bloomberg 2000)
Napster shared music between people over the Internet for free although
the controversial practice was against copyright laws around the world. Napster
became the enemy which could inadvertedly bring down the record industry due to
loss of earnings. The difference between the Mp3 and the former uncompressed
lossless .wav format was file size, a 128kbps Mp3 is approximately a tenth the
size of an uncompressed Wave file, with a small compromise in degradation in
quality. This is a different system from former unauthorised reproduction of
music onto cassette tape or recording music from the radio as the key element
in the equation is the portable file size and the ability to share.
The conventions of converting a wav to mp3 are similar to the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) it is lossy compression, designed to allow the transfer and storage of
media in a small portable size. In 1999 when the original Napster was up and
running via a 55.6k modem it would take around 15 minutes to download a single
song. It may seem like slow in today’s speeds of 20Mbps ADSL connections when
an mp3 can be downloaded in the matter of seconds but at the time a growing
number of users had the first taste of freedom of information. (Aldrich, S et al
2000)
It wasn’t long before the record industry realised what Napster could
potentially do to the record industry, people around the world could upload
mp3s and then share and transfer music without any royalties or payments going
to the record labels and artists, and on December 7th 1999 The Recording Industry Association
of America (RIAA) took action by suing for copyright infringement, asking for
damages of $100,000 each time a song is copied. Further to that on April 13th 2000 the
rock band Metallica joined the lobbying for the shut down of Napster as well as
numbers of Universities in the USA banning the use of the Napster client in
fear of copyright violations. The US courts to be shut down in July 2000, and
in July 2001 Napster shut down its entire network
in order to comply with the injunction. (BBC 2001)
Napster
was a key turning point for music distribution, during the period, other P2P
software had been developed including Kazaa, Emule, WinMx, which meant that the
revolution against the centralisation of music owned by the record labels had
started.
The record companies reacted by trying to close and takeover
each of the three online music sharing services. This proved unsuccessful, and
initiated the product life cycle trend, where digital music distribution
services are continually evolving to avoid the threat of legal action. (P6, Alves, K. 2004).
It wasn’t long before
the 5 major record labels realized that there was a lucrative business
opportunity to invest in, but they had to create a secure system which meant
that unauthorized duplication of mp3 files could not be performed, the answer
to this was DRM (Digital Rights Management)
DRM, which is designed to prevent unauthorised copying of
content and enforce restrictions on its use. When combined, these technologies
provide a personalised online media experience for consumers within the
confines of what Strauss (1999) terms a ‘Digital Fort Knox’, or impenetrable
fortress securing a rich treasure. (Burkart, P, McCourt, T 2004, p.351)
“Eventually the record companies and retailers
have established themselves online, causing reintermediation through the
introduction of a pay-per-download (PPD) and subscription payment system”.
(Alves,
K 2004, p.6)
Rather than phase out
the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retail outlets and physical music products,
they brought in the digital format to run alongside the traditional media. It
wasn’t a major record label which first sought the opportunity, but a pioneering
company Apple which first popularized a business model for the distribution of
digital media with its combined hardware of the iPod and the software of
iTunes. It meant that record labels could transfer music libraries of legalized
music and retain royalty and distribution payments. The flat payout and generic
pricing scheme made this popular with record labels and independent artists,
which under the pricing schemes would earn 70 cents from a 99-cent download.
The modest iTunes cut of 30% meant that Apple could be profitable as well as
the record label or equally an independent artist getting a huge 70% of the
sale, which in the previous traditional music industry this was unheard of. The
preauthorized credit card setup, and one click ordering once the consumer had
set up payment details was what made iTunes the most popular mainstream music
distribution method. (Tunecore 2011)
With the popularity of the social media networks came
MySpace. MySpace allowed record labels, and independent artists the same level
playing field to present a dynamically updated working portfolio of their music
and news. It was a big shift in power from the Major companies to the small
independent music labels and independent artists. The popularity of MySpace was
down to the interaction between fans and artist, it was the first time in
history that fans could directly talk and interact with their favourite bands
in real time in a two way, forum setting. The power of social media today is
that their peers will notice the trends of a particular person and adversely
the fans are acting as promotional tools by sharing artist’s videos, commenting
on status updates, reviewing the latest release. MySpace has the largest
collection of artists and bands online.
Facebook is the most popular social media network in history
to date with users worldwide. As of
February 2012, Facebook has more than 845 million active users, (Protalinski, E.
2012) and
features artist pages, although it doesn’t allow sales of digital media
directly from the platform, but with integration from music resellers such as
Bandcamp, Reverbnation and the integration of applications from within the
customisable to allow for complex, structured business procedures. Soundcloud
is a stripped down purpose built social media website primarily for music and
audio applications. Social media using the Internet and mobile technology has
become an important tool for the distribution of music and creating fan bases.
The four models for digital
distribution.
1.Music
as a product: for example, the iTunes business model. Users pay 79p per
digital download. How this system is a direct follow on from the aging music
industry of owning a CD, but does not have the advantages of having a physical
item and encourages artists to go through a record label. Also offering ‘pay
what you think’
2.Music
as a service: David Kusek compares the future of music to running water (Kusek, D,
Leonhard, G 2005, p.1) Where
users pay a monthly subscription fee, which gets divided between the artists
and consumers have the freedom of listening to any artist. For example, Last
FM, Spotify Premium.
3.Music
for free: a stealth income generated by advertisements goes to the
artists/record companies. This is already in place by the free version of
Spotify. Which has reported losses of £16.6million in 2009. (Clark, N. 2010)
4.
Music in exchange for a ‘shout out’ or
consumer information. Is a new experimental method of what can be given by
the consumer in exchange for music: instead of a monetary payment the consumer
can ‘tweet for a track’, tagging an artist in a status, or unorthodox
techniques such as having the consumers take an online survey in relation to
social media for a free download.
With the increase of technology and bandwidth, and the
popularity of social media is has become a new norm to link digital music
distribution and social media together. It has also enabled independent
musicians such as myself to have the option to be able to have the same digital
distribution models as signed artists, and cutting out the record companies.
2. Research Study:
Compare
the three major social networks, which incorporate music networks and
distribution.
2.1
Reverbnation
Reverbnation
is the newest of the four music based social networking websites I am
critically analysing for my study, launched in 2006 it is the most feature rich
platform for acts and parties involved in the independent music industry.
Band equity
A
feature unique to Reverbnation is a rating system, which uses an algorithm to
work out an artists popularity by giving them a number, the higher the number
the greater the exposure that the artist has had. It combines song plays, page
views, interactions by pooling in stats from the internal use of the website as
well as external interactions through use of ‘widgets’ which can be integrated
into websites via HTML. It is similar to the Facebook ‘Insights’ but the ‘Band
Equity’ takes the stat gathering feature which all the major media websites
implement but takes it further by applying it to a dynamically updated chart
system. The chart system touches on the emotional need for gratification of
artists and is a boost to the ego that the artists can then share to other
social media networks to show as a form of trophy. It is a successful method to
gain traffic on the Reverbnation platform as the more encouragement to the
artist to deliver fans to the platform directly increases the chances of
becoming top of the local charts, and then onwards to the national charts.
Widgets
One
of the downfalls of Reverbnation is that although there are millions of bands,
artists, venues and record labels listed on the website, it is somewhat lacking
the social interaction of the peer-to-peer level conversations. Because of this
there are many attempts to try to tap into the wealth of people resources on
the largest social media networks, Facebook and MySpace. The widgets are a number
of different customisable plug-ins, which can be implemented into Facebook
posts and MySpace profile pages. The main features of the widgets are to
implement a music player and show listings into a small compact player, which
gives fans access to the basic stats of the artist, further information will be
found if the consumer clicks on the artist name.
Band Profile
A
further integration into the social media giant of Facebook is a fully featured
application for the ‘Pages’ feature of Facebook. The band profile is a
repackaged, streamlined version of the Reverbnation profile page which contains
music, videos, biography, shows and other customisable features as well as a
banner option to include a link to your music store of choice that hosts your
music. The combination of ‘Band Profile’ and Facebook ‘Pages’ is a powerful
solution to showcase an artist’s music and achievements with the additional
impact that Facebook allows custom landing pages to new fans, this can be a
great method of captivating brand new people and encouraging them to ‘Like’ the
page once they arrive.
Digital Distribution
As
part of the feature rich service Reverbnation offers its artists, there is a
paid option for artists’ mp3 tracks to be distributed to a number of many
popular digital media outlets including iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, for a yearly
fee of $34.99. The artist then gets the amount of money per download and stream
paid directly into an account, which can then be withdrawn. As an independent
artist I rely on digital distribution services for income and also a greater
exposure to international platforms.
Conclusion
Reverbnation
works best when integrated into the general public centred, social media
websites Facebook and MySpace. Due to the fact that there is a lack of
non-artist members present on Reverbnation I feel that a Reverbnation account
on its own will struggle to gather new listeners apart from other artists and
labels. From my use on Reverbnation I find the majority of my messages in my
inbox are from other artists asking me to check out their music via a ‘Fan
Introduction’, artists looking for gratification from each other. The idiom “You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours” comes to
mind, and in this context it is a false economy because the internal
interaction on the website is not coming from fans with a potential to purchase
your music. This does not amount to real value as artists are generally focused
on their own achievements rather than boosting the popularity of others.
Without the backing from major label artists using the service, Reverbnation
lacks the credibility of the other three social media websites, which major
labels have happily integrated.
2.2
Facebook
Facebook
was founded in 2004, initially to college users in the USA. It gradually
increased in popularity and progressively powered it’s way to become the
world’s most popular social media website, as of today it boasts 900 million
active users. What makes Facebook unique is that it doesn’t have a dedicated
music hosting service. Instead it integrates with applications such as Spotify,
LastFM and Soundcloud to operate as a delivery system to streaming music
service. (Sengupta, S. 2012)
Facebook Insights
“Facebook Insights provides Facebook Platform developers and Facebook
Page owners with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing
trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and
creation of content, Page owners and Platform developers are better equipped to
improve their business and create better experiences on Facebook.”
(Facebook. 2012)
‘Facebook
Insights’ is a statistical service, which relates to the activity of a Facebook
page. In the case of an independent artist the statistics relate to activity on
their page, I will use my own page as an example.
Figure 1. Facebook insights graph
The
main section of the insights provides a graph that plots the popularity of the
page; it has three trends that it follows; ‘Posts’, ‘People Talking About this’
and ‘Weekly Total Reach’. If you hover over each data point, detailed
information will be shown. Independent artists can view this information and
correlate it directly to the type of activity and topic of statuses that were
posted during the dates provided. It can provide excellent feedback to the
types of statuses used to the effect of persuasion, humour, general information
and new media content.
Below
the information graph is an analytical view of the most recent and popular
posts made, which can be ordered by;
Figure 2. Facebook post analysis
Reach
(The number of people that have read the post),
Engaged
Users (The number of unique people that have clicked on your post)
Talking
about this (The number of people that have interacted with the post by sharing
or commenting on the post)
Virality
(The percentage of people that have shared or commenting on a post compared to
the overall amount of people that have seen it.)
This
data can be invaluable in determining which types of posts the artist’s fans
have welcomed. This relates to Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory.
Hypothesis 1:
“Selective
Exposure, Prevents Dissonance”.
(Griffin, E 2003, p. 351)
As
a public figure I need to self censor my statuses in a way, which doesn’t go
against the beliefs of my fans, which will in turn create dissonance. Through
analysing my past statuses I can figure out which type of statuses have created
the most interaction and ‘Likes’. For example, previously I made a Facebook
status, which described my negativity for talent competitions and that music
shouldn’t be a competition. It was one of my most popular posts because it
related to my fans views and beliefs. I believe that the majority of my fans
support independent music and are against the commercialism and undignified
exposure of pop artists on television shows such as The X factor. This belief
was mirrored in the statistics in the analytics of the status.
Figure 3. Facebook post analysis
It
proved popular with my fans, but the same sarcastic status, which has a stab at
the X Factor generation, would more likely to create dissonance on a Pop music
oriented page. By avoiding certain ‘touchy’ subjects on my page I aim to reduce
dissonance and increase popularity.
Facebook Streaming
On September 22nd
2011 Facebook launched a service with partners Spotify, Rdio and MOG. It allows
Facebook users a music streaming service from the Facebook ‘Page’ of the artist
in question. (Panzarino, M.
2011)
The tracks are
displayed on the right hand column of the Facebook page and with a click the
third party application such as Spotify will be launched and the track directly
played. One of the benefits to the artists of this feature is that Facebook
records and displays the play history of its users, which acts as a passive
recommendation service. People with the same interests and likes are more
likely to reduce uncertainty. According to Axiom 6, of the Uncertainty
Reduction Theory of Charles Berger,
“Similarities between people reduce uncertainty, while dissimilarities
produce increases in uncertainty.”
(Griffin, E 2003 p.
351)
Therefore friends and
peers are more likely to ‘Like’ the activity of others and repeat the actions
in following a certain artist. Facebook’s partnership with Spotify created a
controversial requirement that all Spotify users now require a Facebook login
to use the service and an opt-out service which automatically publishes the
music listening habits of the user to the Facebook system. The option to not
publish which tracks the users are listening to is available within the options
but is required to uncheck on every login, which in turn means that the
majority of users will adopt the public view of their music habits. Allowing
Facebook to record musical trends from all of the involved parties, which are
integrated in the service, is a powerful tool for statistics. This information
is currently held in a centralized database, it opens up opportunities for a
global charting system, which would combine Independent artists and Major label
artists because the access to such distribution to Spotify and Last FM are
equal for both entities via an annual fee. (Orlowski, A. 2011)
Implemented
communication theories
A
Facebook page acts as a public front for artists to portray a social media
presence. According to Judee Burgoon’s Expectancy Violations Theory and the
Study of Proxemics by Edward Hall There are four interpersonal distances. (Griffin, E 2003, p.82) The use of a Facebook page exists in the ‘Public Distance’
zone, which is from between 10 feet to infinity. It is less intimate than a
personal profile page of an individual person. This also relates to the Social
Penetration Theory Irwin Altman & Dalmas Taylor, (Griffin, E 2003, p.132) the
self as having layers of intimacy like a multilayer onion. In that the outer,
public layers (Facebook Page) on the surface level shares trivial information
such as biographical information, tastes and worldviews. If a fan interacts
with the page by posting a question, the figurehead of the page then decides to
reply to the question by reciprocating, they are getting further into the
layers of intimacy touching on the semi private core. When a fan meets the
artist at a show he/she may then form a personal friendship and add the person
on their personal Facebook profile. The level of self-disclosure has reached
the semi private stage because the user is more likely to share personal and
uncensored information on a private Facebook profile.
Because
of this boundary of separation between personal profile and Facebook page it is
an example of power distribution. The page owner with the virtual power of
‘Likes’ and a celebrity status appeal has hierarchical power over the less
important members of the group. This is an example of Functional Perspective on
Group Decision Making the theory of Randy Hirokawa & Dennis Gouran (Griffin, E 2003, p.231) Facebook
pages act as a small community group that members all share the same interest
of being a fan or affiliated with subject of the page. This gives the page
owner, extra power in persuasion through being at the top of the hierarchy. The
same system of ‘Followers’ is the main feature of a large social media network
Twitter which I have chosen not to study due to its lack of musical promotion
components compared to the others, although it is still a valid platform for
musical artists there is no distinct separation between artists, fans and other
figure heads.
2.3 MySpace
In
2003 when Myspace was launched, it was the start of a social media revolution
which was going to benefit bands and artists in particular. Myspace made social
networking on the Internet into a mainstream phenomenon. There had been
attempts of social networking websites before Myspace was launched such as
Friends Reunited (A website designed to reunite school and work colleagues,
Vampire Freaks (An alternative and gothic community) and Deviant art (A social
media website devoted to traditional and digital artwork) but none of these had
the influence that the social media giant of Myspace. Between 2005-2008 Myspace
was the most popular landing page for bands, it was an alternative to a
homepage The Myspace profile was a one- stop system with everything available
on one page to the fans as well as interaction involving a ‘wall’. Myspace was
adopted by millions of regular users, which gave the bands in question a surge
in popularity. Certain bands such as ‘The Arctic Monkeys’ owe their success to
the Myspace boom.
"With the boost from MySpace, the Arctic Monkeys proved yet again
that successful bands could do without big record companies. They released
their debut single and album on small independent label Domino. Both went
straight to No 1."
(Stelter, B 2009).
As Myspace became associated with independent artists
becoming famous, whilst bypassing the traditional music industry model of a
record label and publisher it gave way to millions of bands using the service.
Figure 4. Graph showing Myspace vs.
Facebook users
April
19, 2008 - the date that Facebook overtook Myspace
as the #1 social networking site on the Web. (Mack, G. 2008)
After
the success of Myspace up to 2008, the Internet adopted the more ‘grown up’
attitude and migrated to Facebook. The main difference between Facebook and
Myspace was anonymity. Myspace didn’t require the sign up to use a real name
and often users adopted an avatar. Facebook brought transparency and a cleaner,
less cluttered interface and inevitably, Myspace slumped in popularity until
the present day with attempts from pop star Justin Timberlake to revive the
system with a new layout. It was all a little too late as Myspace had already
gained the reputation as a website in decline.
Bulletin Board
A
bulletin post is a system that allowed a post to be made and then seen in a
feed of all friends of the person, artist or band. This is an early version of
the Facebook ‘News Feed’ it brings dynamically updated information to be viewed
in real-time, this is essentially how the twitter network is operated. The
advantage to posting a bulletin by a band was a mini advertisement to entice
you the user to visit their page. Without the bulletin board, the artist’s
relied heavily on the fans regularly checking the artists Myspace page
manually. The evolution of the Internet has made most social media websites ‘on
demand’ and dynamically updated with information. Myspace got there first.
Music Player
Having
music directly to stream on the band’s profile page was the start of media
decentralisation for independent artists, it was one of the first broadcast
methods which allowed a music artist of any level of calibre to showcase their
music to an international audience, the same undiluted system which the major
labels also had access to. When Myspace was introduced in 2003 the speed of the
Internet connection in the U.K was still at the dial up connection rates of 56k
modems or claimed by ITU Internet Reports, 2003
was the ‘Birth of Broadband’. Due to the slower capabilities of computer
hardware and telecommunications speed, Myspace used a less than CD quality
compression of 96Kbps in an mp3 codec. The proprietary compression settings
were never upgraded to meet the more demanding consumer appetite of near CD
quality streams of between 192Kbps and 320Kbps because of this a lot of the
artists migrated to other systems such as Reverbnation or bypassed the music
player altogether and instead integrated the Reverbnation music player into the
profile via HTML.
Profile
Customisation
The
original Myspace system allowed artists and bands to use HTML and CSS to create
a unique experience to deliver rich media content and a high quality
presentation. This is somewhat of a ‘two edged sword’ because the ability to
customize meant that there was a lack of uniformity between different profiles.
The buttons and sections usually ended up in different places from profile to
profile within the interface and for every aesthetically pleasing profile page,
there were a lot more which looked like a clash of bright colours and animated
GIFs. This brought a degradation of quality to the system.
Conclusion.
Myspace
still exists till today and while it was once the main social media website and
the website that defined a lot of the rules and concepts for today’s social
media experience, it failed to keep up to the times with change and as a result
lost a lot of its appeal and popularity.
3. Conclusion and Design of System
To take my
findings of research to create a new social media platform I will take the
positive examples that and avoid the negative approaches.
1. My website will be simple and intuitive.
What I’ve
learnt from the demise of Myspace is that one of the main reasons was that
because of the non conformity of design across various profile pages, it
created a non uniform design which was confusing for the brain to compute. I
will make sure that only essential sections prevail and the navigation system
will be seen on every page.
2. Audio and video will be of high quality
Rather
than give users a preview quality sound or small clips of music, I shall
maintain that all music is provided at least 128kps and higher, which is an
acceptable compression setting for Internet browsing which makes a small
compromise between delivery speed and degradation in quality.
3. Facebook integration
The
internet doesn’t need yet another membership sign up system, Facebook API
provides a system which allows Facebook users to log in to a third party website
and share information directly to the Facebook newsfeed, this creates passive
recommendations.
“Facebook
Platform enables you to make your website more social. You can use our Social Plugins, such as the Like Button to
drive user engagement with a single line of HTML”
(Facebook 2012)
Without
the integration of existing social networks such as Facebook, I will fail to
drive traffic to the website.
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Figures
Figure
1. Facebook insights graph http://www.facebook.com/benparcellmusic
Figure
2. Facebook post analysis http://www.facebook.com/benparcellmusic
Figure
3. Facebook post analysis http://www.facebook.com/benparcellmusic
Figure
4. Graph showing Myspace vs. Facebook users http://www.alexa.com
