This weeks exercise involved looking at our project proposal via a certain interpretive analysis. So I thought it'd be nice...not nice....beneficial.....yeah, beneficial to look at the big world of downloading music under a little number people like to call 'Circuit of Culture'.
For those of you that don't know, the Circuit of Culture is a theory or framework that poses that in studying a cultural text or artifact you must look at its representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. So lets start by looking at downloading music....
Representation: there are many avenues for downloading music, each with a different sort of representation. If one is to use a torrent based p2p filesharing site, they might notice that a majority of these sites are very bland and offer no sensory stimulation. However if one is to visit the iTunes store they are greeted with a totally different representation. With a sleek layout and different headings such as "indie pick" or "whats hot" together with a saturation of consumable alternatives.
Identity: -Geek -Thief- Muso -
we see in iTunes, identity is varied. Different styles of people access different styles of music. Though if one is to go to a bands page that has been featured by iTunes, we see identity starting to work in....for the?????? we see a dark and moody photograph of the band where as for ??????? we see a vibrant and dancey image appealing to their fans. Furthermore in torrent websites, users that frequent "comment" pages have jpeg's or gif's attached to their profile. Here we see what type of user we are linked with.
Production: as stated before, torrent sites tend to be bland and boring type of affair, where itunes is created meticulously to catch attention all over the programs interface.However starting a P2P site is not exactly difficult. Means of production are at, not meaning to sound cliche, the fingertips of any computer user. I could be uploading music this afternoon for a Nepalese Buddhist monk to be downloading within minutes or seconds of its completion.
Consumption:The phenomenon of podcasting has made iTunes a collaborative realm. Furthermore these participatory avenues of consumption increase distribution and allow further sales for iTunes through increasing access to users. Also the participation of torrent sites work on no revenue building motivations, however the site administrators must be making a bit of the advertisements everywhere. The ease of downloading that song repeating over and over in your head you love....$1 something....
Regulation: well P2P file sharing in the majority of cases is ILLEGAL. Don't do it....your stealing money from the artists you admire and love....though people keep on doing it....though many still purchase from iTunes legal copies of things they've already downloaded....
Its cyclical and relies on each other to function...the artifact relies on the understanding of all parts of the circle.
Regulation: well P2P file sharing in the majority of cases is ILLEGAL. Don't do it....your stealing money from the artists you admire and love....though people keep on doing it....though many still purchase from iTunes legal copies of things they've already downloaded....
Its cyclical and relies on each other to function...the artifact relies on the understanding of all parts of the circle.
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