Prosumers - Consumers who become involved in designing/customising products (music) for their own needs.
PDE - Production, Distribution, Exchange/Exhibition.
Production involves the creation of the media product and is the Production company's responsibility. This can be done once the artist/producer has found the funding which could come from a parent (umbrella) corporation.
Distribution includes the prints (physical copies of an album and finding the exhibitors/retailers to sell them) and marketing (raising audience awareness and anticipation of the new release). Distribution is now very easy thanks to the Internet as there are many different way to access music through the Internet, such as YouTube, illegal downloads etc.
Exhibition includes home (the distributor is paid by the company who is selling the product in their store, for example HMV), iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc. It is also exhibited through non-profitable means to make the audience want to buy their product, this is done through radio, TV, adverts, music videos. A lot of exhibition is now done through the Internet rather than physical shops. Exhibition can also be done through concerts and festivals.
Digital media technology continues to develop. How is this significant for media institutions and audiences?
In the past, most people would buy CDs in store and listen to that through a CD player or downloaded it to their MP3 player or iPod. However, people now often illegally download their music straight to their music device or use free websites such as YouTube or Spotify. Being able to this is a good for the audience as they are still able to listen to what music they want and for free. Being able to download music for free is also quick and easy meaning the audience is not going to any extra hassle to download a song that they like. However, this is not god for the media institutions. The artist and record label will be losing out on money because they are no longer getting paid as much for their music. They then have to find other ways of getting consumers to pay for their work or to get some sort of income, such as festivals and concerts. Due to the loss of profit that the artist and record label are receiving may cause them to resign from the music industry, meaning the artist will lose out on music because of their illegal downloads. But because the audience have already started to illegally download they are not likely to begin to pay for music because they know that they can get it just as quickly and easily for free.
It is not only music which suffers from this but films as well. Audiences are also likely to watch movies online for free. Due to illegally downloading of music and films, stores are also likely to go out of business. A good example of this is Blockbusters. Ever since online downloading has becoming popular stores such a blockbusters are no longer needed so therefore go out of business. The loss of a store such as this is a loss to the media institution as well as the audience. The media institution is losing out on somewhere to distribute their product meaning they will have to find somewhere else to distribute to. The audience is also losing out on a store which was once considered great because of their illegal downloads, causing stores to go out of business.
Discuss the issues raised by media ownership in the production and exchange of media texts
One of the issues raised by media ownership to do with production could be that the owners do not own enough money to be able to produce good music videos, good editing etc. Having bad quality products will the make it harder in the future steps of the product as less people will be interested in investing in the product. Another issue could be producing a product which will sell well. The artist and record label will have to produce something unique and eye-catching so that people will be interested and buy it. However they cannot be too adventurous as the audiences like predictable products.
Media ownership also has some issues within the exchange of media texts. One of the issues with exchange is that a lot of people now do not pay for the music that they buy, causing the artist and record label to lose out on profit. Another issue could be that the owners do not know where they could exhibit their product and may have trouble finding a store or website to exhibit the product.
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