Wednesday, August 1, 2007

social networking

I was reading the paper on the train and found this article about Piracy hits high note. I can't find the article online so I will type away.

"Social networks are changing the way people consume music at a time when piracy is on the rise.
Apple today boasted it had sold more than 3 billion songs at its iTunes online store.
But researchers said the growth of legal downloads had slowed and industry players had to adapt or watch profits fade.
A survey by Entertainment Media Research found that more than 50 percent of people surfed social networking sites to find music.
A further 30 percent said they went to buy or download music they had discovered on a social network site.
On popular sites such as MySpace and Bebo, the numbers of people who use sites to find music rises to about 75 percent.
John Enser, head of music at the law firm Olswang that coauthored the survey, said social networking sites represented a new platform for the music industry.
"Discovering music is widespread with the latest generation of consumers, but the process of actually purchasing the music needs to be made easier," he said.
The survey found music was increasinly key to social networks.
The number of people claining they illegally downloaded music tracks had risen and legal downloading was in decline.
Russell Hart, chief executive of Entertainment Media Research , said the findings represented a new era of "democratisation" in the way consumbers interacted with music and artists.
"Social networks are fundementally changing the way we discover purchase and use music," he said."

This article was interesting because it touched alot on what we have been discussing in our ECMP455 class. We have been talking about social networking as being the key to the future. Sharing each others work and learning new ways to teach and explore. I never thought of finding music on someone elses network. But if information is being shared I guess everything else is being shared as well.

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