The Wild New Media West

The roles and functions in the reconfiguration of new media environment that have benefited the most from the evolutionary period since the dot com bubble are held by large conglomerates of media empires. Media empires, sometimes referred to as communications cartel companies, in Canada, for example, Bell, Shaw, Telus, Rogers, and American companies Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon Yahoo and respective Internet service providers. These are large service and distribution companies who create access and organize the almost infinite amount of content on the Cloud. Who are these companies and what exactly do they do? Are they hardware manufacturers, media outlets or are they service providers? Or are they tomorrow's record companies and film studios? Based on the arguments that I provide, they are or will soon be all of those.

Today, we can see how horizontal and vertical integration creates large media conglomerates of radio, television and newspaper companies. Integration is not limited to traditional media. New media conglomerates influence traditional structures, but actively create new structures and these reconfigurations have implications for every phase of the industry from artists, content creators, to record companies, service providers and media outlets as well as consumers among others. We can notice those shifts taking place when giants like Google acquired YouTube, or when Yahoo acquired Flickr; their roles and functions are the new marketing, distribution and access points for content on the Cloud.

Changes within the music industry tends to focus on how online music distribution services are changing the industry. Online music distribution software companies such as Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, Youtube, even Myspace and Facebook have allowed users to upload, update, streamline and improve the music industry. These software companies have taken advantage of music and content as public good. In the short term their service is useful, but their long-term service is volatile and dependent upon political and social structures of governing nations and hardware structures of companies like Rogers, Telus, Bell and Shaw, in Canada, and Google, Apple, etc. Communications cartels: mobile service providers, Internet service providers, cell-phone manufacturers, provide the hardware, or the backbone for content services. They have an oligopolistic strangle-hold on new media hardware, and when the previously mentioned software companies iron out the issues with rights holders, the communications cartels further benefit as new media traffic increases. In fact we can see how manufacturers and Internet service providers are beginning to play a direct role in the music and film industry. Online hosting and streaming platforms are no longer a monopoly held by Netflix. Indeed, Netflix is quickly becoming a small player in the field.

Holton notices that, “In recent years, music labels and publishers have worked hard to license their music on an array of platforms including mobile networks, mobile handsets, websites, Internet service providers and pay-TV groups.” The streaming platforms have the aim of fighting the war on piracy, but they also have the side-effect of placing enormous amount of power on the communications cartel companies, or the gatekeepers, who then control access not only to the internet, but now have the potential to stratify access to differing levels of content.

New media software companies are service providers in the short term but the new media conglomerates and hardware companies are the feet on the ground, constructing cell-phone towers, designing and manufacturing mobile devices, laying fiber-optic cable and installing signal exchanges. Once those systems are in place, communications cartel companies will eventually benefit from their investments. They will and do control the information, and amount of information, that goes over their lines. They are the short term beneficiaries and they also benefit over the long-term by developing, creating, buying or investing in companies that distribute content over their own hardware.

New media conglomerates who provide service and access to online material, whether material is 'good' or 'bad', are largely immune to tastes of the companies, and only adherent to the tastes of the audience. They cannot be compared to traditional media conglomerates. Indeed, what is consistently deemed 'bad' material, by the number of dislikes, is outrageously popular. Some videos e.g. Friday, by Rebecca Black on YouTube, though the dislikes outnumber the likes, have a view count in the tens of millions. Such 'bad' or 'absurd' videos subsequently spawn an immeasurable amount of related content. The point remains that the 'bad' content is easily created and widely available, 'good' content is sometimes created at a loss, but the bottleneck remains at the access points, which are controlled by the new media manufacturing and services industry. The roles and functions that benefit the most from the adoption and diffusion of new media content are the roles around the bottleneck. The bottleneck is controlled by Internet service providers and the technology manufacturing and services industries. The potential for increased benefit through supporting roles in enforcing copyright litigation and limiting or providing greater access to content takes place around this bottleneck.

Cloud-based music distribution has created a situation where traditional models of marketing, selling and distributing music were not profitable anymore. Wikstr?m points out the plethora of options and opportunities being offered by new technology and new media systems. He also points out that “In the new music economy, characterized by high connectivity and little control, it becomes increasingly difficult to charge a premium for discrete chunks of information.” Individual music products become increasingly difficult to monetize because they are widely available. The high connectivity and what is known as the 'Long Tail' further opens numerous channels and niches of creativity that were previously non-existent, and this further decreases the value of individual creative acts. The tools and technology involved in opening up these niches are not without their consequences. Over the course of the semester we have tried to understand who benefits. Who is that someone? Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne says, “Why then is there so much conversation about tools? It's obviously about the money, its about the investment... There has been such catastrophic decline in the traditional music business, the infrastructure is so badly broken that we're turning over every rock to grow something to replace it. As a result there is tremendous pressure on artists.” Garland is talking about the creativity infrastructure, or the opportunity to make money by being creative, in the traditional music business. So how does the artist or creative act make money in a new media environment? And if the creative act does not make the money, then who does?

To answer those questions we must notice that in the new music economy there is a marked increase in 'any' content. Cloud-based marketing and distribution services does not differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' content the way the traditional creative arts business models did, or at least tried to do. Mainstream content bypasses the traditional creative industry because that industry would not consider it content. The traditional music economy is structured the way it is because of the massive production costs involved. Content needed to be reliably successful because of the “sunk costs,” that is, unrecoverable money spent before a single copy of content was produced. Conversely, the new media industry creates by participating in, indeed is a massive “crap-shoot.”

Beyond momentary internet sensations, the point here is accentuated by famous Internet Meme “Magibon”. Youtube user MRirian uploaded a video Me doing nothing of someone, possibly herself, silently sitting facing at the camera doing nothing. Magibon is known for her minimalist, staring-contest-esque, googly-eyed videos. Magibon debuts in July 2006, became an official partner of YouTube boasted over 100,000 subscribers. How can the traditional music economy or creative industry compete with someone doing nothing? Magibon garnered fame from her authenticity. One requirement of authenticity is not being affiliated with what we would know as a traditional creative act. The point remains that someone benefits from the reconfiguration that the technology and outrageously uncommon content has created. In this specific case YouTube, and consequently Google benefits. The 'lowest common denominator' remains the communications cartel companies mentioned previously. They provide access, storage, distribution and organization of online content.

Internet service providers and the online media services industry further benefit from increased use of online gaming and social networking, of which the music industry is a driving force. The traditional creative economy has been transformed from a “content” industry to a “context” industry, and the context exists in living virtually, by that I mean living within an ideological space almost totally mediated by new media. Imagine a service which is constantly attuned to the user's release of pheromones. How are these diverse creative consumption needs recognized? Music and online media play a part in an online, and offline, intertexual, interpellative and interwoven social culture from social networking to gaming and virtual lives. The virtual social dynamics take up enormous amounts of bandwidth and storage. The providers of bandwidth, storage and organization of online content are benefiting enormously and are quickly becoming the players on the scene.

The music publishers, the record labels and online music platforms have tried to square off in court, but the battle is superfluous. Now with Ai creating a tsunami of content, images as well as textual content, to rival a “good” artist, the gatekeepers are the ones holding the cards. We notice this as giant record companies such as Warner Music Group (WMG) record massive losses and look for a buyer. Meanwhile, many argue the record labels are fighting a losing battle. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde argues that communications technology has created an open and free system, and will continue to do so as technology evolves. The reason the current model of copyright is not working is because it is outmoded and outdated. The culture is growing from using file-sharing, and even the roles that The Pirate Bay fulfills will be outdated shortly, There will be better systems. Ai will create content that is not "copy-writable". Everything is going to evolve. It's just going to get easier and easier to connect. Artists interact with online consumers of music and content via customized online websites. This new dynamic has done away with tangible music and is currently distributing via intangible forms of music. Some argue Sunde's idea of micro-payment systems are only the beginning to an age of distribution via live-streaming data. The industry is quickly being transformed by the technological capability of fulfilling consumers needs; a technology that is capable of a high-bandwidth, permanent connection to the Cloud.

Technology is rearranging structures, and creating new structures that bypass the traditional music and media economy, to the point that society is being restructured. The roles and functions that connect users with data on the Cloud benefit in these dynamics, and the companies involved are the greatest players. We have seen how Amazon, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal can attempt to shut down dissenters like Wiki-leaks. We have also witnessed the counterattack by hacker culture, or 'Hacktivism' to take up the cause to protect one of its own. The 'hacktivist' type of protest has a core ideology dedicated to keeping information free, namely free from copyright. This war, if you will, is unique because it is taking place online, it indirectly involves the creative industry, but the side effects are mostly felt in larger mainstream society. I use the music industry to exemplify these side effects because it is a copyright industry, and we can see how it reacts with its stake in the online war. Ai has proven itself in the photo realistic realm, it can hold it's own in the textual realm. It remains to be seen whether it can keep up in the video-realistic and music-realistic realm in a comprehensive, authentic way. It will determine whether creatives keep their diminishing controlling role within the traditional music economy, or whether those roles will ask the Internet service providers to become the online police. The Gatekeepers around the bottleneck are the functions that serve the access to the online war. Furthermore, with the move to live streaming capable data, where the user required perpetual and constant access to content on The Cloud rather than a personal hard drive or storage device, the functions and roles that communications cartels play take on increasingly important roles.