Index for articles

17/09/15- 1 and 2- Twitter 'to unveil founder Jack Dorsey as new chief executive and Music streaming just became a billion-dollar industry

24/09/15 -3 and 4-Newsflush! Digital video’s bog-standard content and BBC to launch new streaming service in America

 1/10/15- 5 and 6- Emojis and quizzes led the way at Social Media Week 2015 and How to make the perfect tweet

8/10/15-  7 and 8-Google AMP battles ad-blocking, Apple and Facebook by cutting load times and It’s time the media treated Muslims fairly

15/10/15- 9 and 10-USA Today's Facebook-inspired use of emojis gets thumbs down and Apple faces damages bill after jury finds iPhone and iPad chip violates processor patent

22/10/15- 11 and 12- Google launches €150m fund for publishers' digital news projects and Amazon claims New York Times didn't check facts for work culture expose

28/10/15- 13 and 14-Sony to pay staff $8m over 'The Interview' hack and Mobile ad spend hits new high as consumers remain glued to smartphones

04/11/15 - 15 and 16- Twitter is replacing favourites with likes – but does anyone heart it? and Sun used as front to scam thousands of pounds, says newspaper

09/11/15- 17 and 18- Daily Star sales rise after price cut – but the Sun holds steady and Facebook reveals 1.5bn people use the site every month                 

18/11/15- 19 and 20- BBC to cut entertainment and comedy but plans new Saturday night shows and Sky launches new set-top box

27/11/15- 21 and 22- BBC3 TV channel to be switched off by February, BBC Trust confirms and The Sun did not spin its headline

03/12/15- 23 and 24-Alibaba buys China's version of YouTube for $4.8bn and Rebekah Brooks praised by David Dinsmore over News UK's changes

11/12/15- 25 and 26-The Independent’s blog site hit by ransomware attack and Brits to get access to BBC iPlayer and Sky Go on holiday as EU changes copyright rules

26/12/2015-27 and 28 YouTube tipped to strike licensing deals for TV shows and films andSun website traffic rises by a quarter – but it is eclipsed by the Mirror

29 and 30-WhatsApp blocked in Brazil for 48 hours by court and Twitter warns users they may have been hacked by 'state-sponsored actors'

31 and 32- Twitter shares hit new low on rumored shift to 10,000-character tweets and Evgeny Lebedev sounds out interest in cut-price national the i

33 and 34-Has social media ruined the web? and New York Times chooses Jim Rutenberg to take over David Carr column

35 and 36-The sun politics and News Corp denies rumors company wants to buy Twitter

37 and 38- Daily Mail website's ad revenues surge as paper announces price hike andTwitter shares jump over 10pc on talk of Marc Andreessen and Silver Lake takeover

39 and 40-Yahoo admits it could sell off its core internet business and News Corp announces cost-cutting at Australian and British newspapers

41 and 42-Yahoo admits it could sell off its core internet business and Time Inc buys what is left of MySpace for its user data

43 and 44- Independent aims to keep stars and boost quality in digital shift and Mobile giant Three to block online advertising

45 and 46-Google Amp will make reading the news faster, but can it keep the web open? andhe Daily Telegraph is its readers. Long may they thrive

47 and 48-TV advertising exceeds £5bn for first time and universal and news corp to merge

49 and 50- Adblocking: what are your reasons for blocking ads online? and Are mobiles changing how we shop?

51 and 52- The Sun editor-in-chief: We will become a holiday operator and betting company as well as a newspaper and Net neutrality: BBC urges Ofcom to protect iPlayer

53 and 54-Google pulls adblocking app for Samsung phones and BBC: 'No hiding place' for corporation under new regulation plan, says author of plan to scrap Trust

55 and 56- iPhone 7: Next Apple phone could feature Smart Connector from the iPad Pro, leak suggests and Snapchat update: App adds ability to have emoji follow people around inside the app

57 and 58-Facebook F8: Messenger to get new robot powers and virtual reality to roll out at company’s developer conference andiOS 9 date bug: iPhones could be forced to break by connecting to any Wi-Fi network

59 and 60-Apple transparency report: over 1,000 government requests for user data and is Apple's next product an electric car?

61 and 62-Facebook and Instagram down: Sites not working as thousands report being unable to get onto site and Microsoft kills off Xbox 360 after more than a decade

63 and 64-Google is a ‘partially dangerous’ website, Google says and The Sun to face legal action over claims of phone hacking after High Court judge gives go-ahead

65 and 66-YouTube gets 6-second ads that users can’t skip, in attempt to sell things to impatient mobile users andYouTube is bringing short, unskippable ads that are meant to force young people to watch through them.Called “Bumper ads”, Google says that the six-second videos are a direct response to the fact that more and more people are watching on mobile phones.


67 and 68-Smartphone demand falls for first time in history and Google tests black links in searches

69 and 70- Reading on computer screens changes how your brain works, scientists say and Chinese stake in iPhone chip designer Imagination Technologies raises talk of takeover battle with Apple

2 articles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/09/reading-on-computer-screens-changes-how-your-brain-works-scienti/

Reading on computer screens changes how your brain works, scientists say




Reading on computer screens and smartphones has made people unable to fully understand what they are reading as our brains retreat into focusing on small details rather than meanings, a study claims.
Researchers found that those who filled in forms, read short stories or studied using computer screens tended to grasp the basic facts of what they were reading, but often failed to process the “high-level” or abstract ideas behind the materials.

• The authors suggested that the possibility of distractions offered by computers had caused people to resort to the less mentally-challenging activity of grasping concrete details when reading, even in the test conditions when these distractions were not available.
• “The ever-increasing demands of multitasking, divided attention, and information overload that individuals encounter in their use of digital technologies may cause them to ‘retreat’ to the less cognitively-demanding lower end of the concrete-abstract continuum,” they wrote.
• In a comprehension test about a short story, those who had read it in print fared far better in questions about the story’s inferences and broader narrative, while those who had read the digital document retained more information about minor details.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/09/chinese-stake-in-iphone-chipmaker-imagination-technologies-raise/


Chinese stake in iPhone chip designer Imagination Technologies raises talk of takeover battle with Apple




A Chinese government-backed technology firm has taken a stake in British chip company Imagination Technologies, raising the prospect of a battle with Apple for the company that designs a crucial element of the iPhone.
Stock exchange rules forced Imagination to disclose on Monday that Tsinghua Unigroup, a technology conglomerate which aims to become one of the world’s biggest chip companies, had taken a 3pc stake in the Hertfordshire-based company.
Shares jumped as much as 15pc as analysts speculated that it could be an early sign of a takeover by Tsinghua or Apple, which uses Imagination’s graphics chip designs in the iPhone.

• Apple has held repeated talks with Imagination although it said in March it was not currently negotiating with the company, while Tsinghua has been given a $47bn (£33bn) warchest to become one of the world’s biggest chipmakers alongside Intel, Qualcomm and Samsung as China aims for supremacy in the industry.
  “The idea that the Chinese state’s acquisition of intellectual property is a strategic priority, and that Imagination could be a target, has been floated before, but considered slightly left-field. The announcement brings this idea to the forefront,” said Investec’s Roger Phillips.
• The prospect of a sale has, however, brightened as Imagination undergoes a major restructuring amid repeated losses. Sir Hossein Yassaie, its chief executive of 18 years, left the company in February amid shareholder disquiet, and the company is set to sell off parts of its business including the digital radio division.

2 articles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/28/smartphone-demand-falls-for-first-time-in-history/

Smartphone demand falls for first time in history

the global smartphone market has shrunk for the first time ever, as consumers spending slows and the sector becomes over-saturated.Smartphone shipments to vendors and customers fell 3 per cent year-on-year from 345 million units in the first three months of 2015, to 334.6 million handsets during the same period this year, according to research from Strategy Analytics.

• It is the first time smartphone shipments have ever shrunk year-on-year, which analysts have attributed to market saturation, weak international currency, worries over economies and consumers upgrading their handsets less frequently.
• Sales of the iPhone, which accounts for two thirds of Apple's revenue, fell from 61 million units sold between January - March last year to 51 million handsets during the first three months of 2016, a decline of 10 million units.
• Lesser-known Chinese brand Oppo leap-frogged Xiaomi to take fourth place, with 4.6 per cent of the market to Xiaomi's 4.4 per cent. Other brands, including HTC, LG, Sony and BlackBerry, accounted for 43.6 per cent of the global smartphone market share in the first financial quarter of 2016.

Phones are becoming more of  a less of demand recnetly as no one wnats to have a phone or they have a differnt type which are less popular.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/09/google-tests-black-links-searches


Google tests black links in searches





Google searches could soon look very different: the company is testing a new version of its results page featuring black links, in the place of the familiar blue.
Users began reporting the visual change on Sunday, suggesting that Google is embarking on one of its famous “A/B tests”. The company regularly makes a small change for a subset of users, examining how they respond before deciding whether or not to roll it out to the wider userbase.

• Paying attention to the little things has paid off for Google in the past. Famously, when it decided to introduce adverts on Gmail, it ran a test to pick between 40 different shades of blue.
• Switching the links from blue to black is a far larger change. So if Google does upgrade it from test to feature, you can be sure there’s a lot of money to be made in doing so.
• In 2014, Google UK’s managing director, Dan Cobley, said what happened next: “We saw which shades of blue people liked the most, demonstrated by how much they clicked on them. As a result we learned that a slightly purpler shade of blue was more conducive to clicking than a slightly greener shade of blue, and gee whizz, we made a decision.

It good that google are changing a little bit as its soemthinf that they need to change as google has been around for  long time they need a change and need to make sure that there is a different way of consumers recoginisng them.

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/youtube-gets-6-second-ads-that-users-can-t-skip-in-attempt-to-sell-things-to-impatient-mobile-users-a7001736.html

YouTube gets 6-second ads that users can’t skip, in attempt to sell things to impatient mobile users

YouTube is bringing short, unskippable ads that are meant to force young people to watch through them.Called “Bumper ads”, Google says that the six-second videos are a direct response to the fact that more and more people are watching on mobile phones.

• The new ads are intended to help companies show ads to people watching on mobile phones, according to Google. Half of people aged 18-49 tend to watch videos on their smartphone even if they’re at home and the ads are specifically targeted for those habits, Google said.
• Companies will be able to start buying the ads from May, but some have already shown on YouTube during testing.
• YouTube already rarely offers much longer unskippable ads, for which companies must pay considerably more. Those can last over a minute, but are very rare and appear to mostly show for people who are using adblockers.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/26/twitter-earnings-wall-street-revenue-active-monthly-users

Twitter misses expectation on revenue but adds millions more users

Twitter stock fell more than 12% in after-hours trading after the company reported revenue of $595m on Tuesday, missing expectations. Twitter was expected to report $607.8m in revenue. Meanwhile, its earnings, which were expected to be 10 cents a share, exceeded expectations at 15 cents a share.

• The first quarter saw Twitter’s number of active users rise to 310 million, 2 million more than expected by Wall Street. Any growth would have been an improvement over last quarter, when Twitter reported that it was actually losing members. In February, the company reported that its user base had dropped to 305 million, down from 307 million users from the previous quarter.
• The growth in users is good news for the company. If Twitter figures out how to grow its user base, “its advertiser base will grow dramatically”, Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a research note released on Monday.
• Even the news of Twitter’s user growth was not good enough to stop its stocks from falling more than 12% in after-hours trading

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-is-a-partially-dangerous-website-google-says-a6992596.html

Google is a ‘partially dangerous’ website, Google says

Google is a “partially dangerous” website and people should be careful when using it, Google has warned.The site’s main search engine could try and steal the personal information of its users or install malware on their computers, according to Google’s unusually frank assessment of itself.The warning comes as part of Google’s own online transparency report, which lists reports on how private and safe websites are – and calls out those that are potentially dangerous.

• That includes Google itself, which is said to contain pages that have “deceptive content”. It also says that some pages on the domain install malware, steal personal information from their users and redirect users to other suspect websites.
• Users sometimes post bad content on websites that are normally safe,” a warning that shows on every potentially dangerous website reads. “Safe Browsing will update the safety status once the webmaster has cleaned up the bad content.”
• Google advises affected websites to head to its “Webmasters Help for Hacked Sites” page. That details the ways that Google can clean itself up, at which point it can ask for its status to be reviewed – by itself.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-sun-to-face-legal-action-over-claims-of-phone-hacking-after-high-court-judge-gives-go-ahead-a7004736.html

The Sun to face legal action over claims of phone hacking after High Court judge gives go-ahead

The Sun newspaper is to face legal action brought by the victims of phone hacking, after a High Court judge ruled the claims can go ahead.It sees the paper brought into civil litigation over the hacking of people's private voicemail messages for the first time.

• News Group Newspapers - now News UK - has already settled more than 1,000 claims relating to the practice which saw the News of the World shut down.
• Up to 50 new claims are soon to be issued in the case, many of which will now include allegations of hacking at The Sun.
• Others now suing NGN include EastEnders actors Christopher Parker and Brooke Kinsella, Coronation Street actor Kym Marsh, designer Pearl Lowe and her musician husband Danny Goffey and Leslie Heseltine, who is better known as actor and comedian Les Dennis

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-instagram-down-not-working-unable-not-working-loading-a6994346.html

Facebook and Instagram down: Sites not working as thousands report being unable to get onto site

Facebook is down, with thousands of people already reporting that they can't get onto the social network. Instagram, which is owned by the social network, also appears to be suffering problems. It isn't clear what has caused the problems and whether they are connected.

• The site Down Detector reported that thousands of people were having problems logging onto Facebook, using all of its platforms. It listed the problem as a "total blackout", affecting the whole network rather than its website or apps specifically.
• The site appeared to indicate that the problem was specifically affecting those users in the UK. Almost all reports came from the country, with most of the rest of the world apparently unaffected.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/21/microsoft-kills-off-xbox-360-after-more-than-a-decade/

Microsoft kills off Xbox 360 after more than a decade

Microsoft is to cease production of the Xbox 360, 11 years after the console first went on sale.The company's head of Xbox Phil Spencer said that while the console meant a lot to its staff, "the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us."

• The console first went on sale in November 2005, and was redesigned twice with 2010's Xbox 360 Slim and the Xbox 360 Elite in 2013.  Microsoft last shared official sales figures in 2013, when it announced the console had been purchased 78.2 million times. Its successor the Xbox One went on sale the same year, and has sold around 19 million units to date.
• The company has been locked in a losing battle with Sony's PlayStation 4 for years, which has sold around 35.9 Sony is reported to be working on a more powerful version of the PS4  which could be intended to bolster its virtual reality games content with the release of its play station.
• The move is a first in the competitive gaming world - a step towards greater collaboration, given that many first-time console buyers choose the platform their friends use in order to play against them.

2 articles

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/apple-transparency-report-government-requests-phone-data-privacy

Apple transparency report: over 1,000 government requests for user data

US authorities asked for user data from Apple accounts 1,015 times during the second half of 2015, according to figures the iPhone maker released Tuesday.The requests pertain to information on services such as iMessages, emails, photos and device backups.

The number of requests is up from 971 during the first half of last year and 788 during the last six months of 2014. 

• While the number of requests has gone up, the number of users affected by such requests has fluctuated and in late 2015 was about the same as it was a year earlier.
• Apple’s transparency report also suggests that investigators are adapting to a world where consumers, and criminal suspects, spend less time on landline telephones, which could be tapped with the help of a phone company. Apple received significantly fewer law enforcement requests during the second half of 2013, totaling 638.
• In the back half of 2015, the US government made 1,250 to 1,499 national security requests of Apple affecting 1,000 to 1,249 accounts. That’s up from 750 to 999 requests affecting 250 to 499 accounts during the first half of last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/21/is-apple-next-product-an-electric-car-telsa

Is Apple's next product an electric car?

Apple’s not-so-secret project to build an electric car is heating up, according to media reports, with the company poaching an expert from rivals Tesla. It has also opened an R&D office in Germany, home to some of the world’s most important luxury car manufacturers.

• While Porritt, who quit Tesla in September 2015, is one of many former Tesla engineers employed in Cupertino, he’s one of the only senior managers to have made the jump. The timing of his departure coincides with comments made by Elon Musk in October 2015, when he referred to Apple as a “Tesla Graveyard”.
• At Tesla, Porritt worked on all three of the company’s major cars – the models S, 3 and X – and before then his career spanned Land Rover, where he worked for a decade and Aston Martin, where he spent 16 years as chief engineer.
• The paper also reports that the company is aiming for a street date in 2019 or 2020, but that the initial version of the car will not be the self-driving wonder that many have been hoping for. According to Faz, that will come later but when it hits the market it won’t even be partially automated.

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-f8-messenger-to-get-new-robot-powers-and-virtual-reality-to-roll-out-at-company-s-developer-a6980861.html

Facebook F8: Messenger to get new robot powers and virtual reality to roll out at company’s developer conference

Facebook is about to launch a huge new bot platform that could change the future of the internet forever.The company is unveiling a platform of chat bots that it hopes can become the future of customer service and information. That brings it into line with Microsoft’s Skype and other apps like Kik in moving its focuses onto chatbots that are meant to help people out.

• The new bots will sit within the Messenger app, which users traditionally use to chat to friends — and, as of last year, human representatives for businesses. But the site is making some of those representatives into robots, allowing companies to have their customers chat with artificially intelligent versions of those helpers.
• if a user tells the bot to pay their friend £30, for instance, then the robot will be able to recognise the different parts of that sentence and send the money through their bank, no humans needed.
• But that power also seems to be limited. The app hasn’t rolled out much further than San Francisco, yet, and more developed features appear still to be handled by humans.

Having chat bots is good in away as they get to make people talk rather than having to go on other apps and speak like that.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/ios-9-date-bug-iphones-could-be-forced-to-break-by-connecting-to-any-wi-fi-network-a6982851.html

iOS 9 date bug: iPhones could be forced to break by connecting to any Wi-Fi network

A new bug has been found by security researchers that could allow hackers to cause problems for phones without their owner ever knowing. That bug works by tricking phones into thinking that the date is 46 years ago. While the previous problem has since been fixed, the new exploit uses problems with the Wi-Fi network to trick phones into resetting their date. It essentially works in the same way as the old trick, but works over the network.

• Researchers Patrick Kelley and Matt Harrigan found that they could hijack the network time protocol (NTP) which the phone uses to check what the date and time is. The security researchers could pretend to be an NTP server, and instead tell the phone that it is January 1, 1970 – causing issues for the phones.
• Users can stay safe from the bug by making sure that they don’t connect to suspect Wi-Fi networks, which security experts advise anyway. But that might be more difficult than it sounds, since hackers can easily trick devices into connecting to suspect networks without their owner ever knowing.

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/iphone-7-next-apple-phone-could-feature-smart-connector-from-the-ipad-pro-leak-suggests-a6984016.html

iPhone 7: Next Apple phone could feature Smart Connector from the iPad Pro, leak suggests

The iPhone 7 could feature the Smart Connector that debuted with the iPad Pro, and will probably take other features from its larger sibling, according to a new report from Japan.The Smart Connector allows for the easy connection of accessories like keyboards, and can transfer both data and power, meaning that accessories don’t need their own batteries. It uses contacts rather than a plug, meaning that accessories can be added or taken away more quickly.

• At the moment, Apple has only used the smart connector for the Smart Keyboard, a light keyboard that also serves as a case. But it appears that it can also be used for other accessories – which might also be used on the iPhone.
• It has been suggested that Apple might have people plug their headphones into the Lightning port on the bottom of the phone, for instance. If that was the case, then the phone might be able to charge through the smart connector so both can be used at the same time.
• The smaller iPad Pro that was launched this week, for instance, comes with a screen with increased colours and a brighter backlight, all of which might be brought to the iPhone 7 too. And the new tablet is also the first to offer Apple’s “True Tone” display, which matches the colour of the screen to that in the world around it, which will also be expected to come to the phones at some point.

This is good as many people like the ipads and prefer to have it and like to have other gadgets involved with what they have. This means that it would be differnt for people to use if they have.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snapchat-update-app-adds-ability-to-have-emoji-follow-people-around-inside-the-app-a6983701.html

Snapchat update: App adds ability to have emoji follow people around inside the app

The chat app has added a new feature that can automatically track movement around videos, and have an emoji follow that same movement. It means that someone can stick an emoji on top of their face and then walk around, for instance.

• Previously, the app allowed people to add an emoji as a sticker – covering their face, for instance. But it would stay in the same place, until now.
• The emoji must be added as a sticker, rather than through a text box. But they’ll then follow whatever they’re placed over, rotating and shrinking as well as moving to make sure that they look like they’re really inside the video.
• Snapchat’s update follows a huge redesign last month, that looked to see the app focus on becoming more of a traditional chat app as well as way of sharing photos and videos. The update added stickers, like Facebook Messenger, and made it easier to have video and audio calls.

News case study

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/feb/24/is-new-music-killing-music-industry

New music has been introduced all the time. Its becoming more and more better and important to people that are really passionate about music. Having music does mean alot for peopel as it helps people when they are in different moods. For example if someone is sad they would listen to sad music to put them in that happy mood that they wanted.Its never been more wider and more faster and accessible than eveer. People didnt have the technology to do this and now they can.the number of new acts who are building sustainable careers is tiny – and shrinking. In 2009, again according to the BPI, 46 debut artists had an album sell 100,000 copies or more in the UK. In 2011, it fell to 32, and last year only 14 acts hit that mark. I was posed a question by a senior exec back in 2008, when iTunes was exploding,” says Will Page, director of economics at Spotify “Should you gamble $5m on one artist, or spread your bets of $1m each on five different artists? In an age of unlimited choice, do you bet big or bet small?”

The answer, so far, has been that the industry does both. But as income has fallen, artists are given less time to turn a profit. Tales of major-label signings being dropped after one album – sometimes before a record has been released – are becoming more common, even after enormous amounts of money has been spent on marketing the groups, as was the case with the Universal’s Monarchy and Palladium. Could the industry reverse its decline if it returned to what might be considered the old-fashioned model: sign fewer artists and work with them for longer periods, worrying less about the short-term fix of big hit singles and spending more energy building catalogues that generate cash over a much longer period?

The pop, R&B and country promotions staffs at majors are enormous around America, and sometimes around the world – and that machine needs to be fed,” he says. “And that machine does a very good job, but they have a different infrastructure and different bills to pay. A major is going to expect quicker returns, and therefore we’re not seeing a lot of second, third and fourth albums, or lengthy careers.”Glassnote has a deal with Universal, and its artists – which include Mumford & Sons, Chvrches and Phoenix – are able to plug in to the major label’s global distribution and promotion systems. But Glass argues his label’s independence gives it an ability majors may lack to sign artists for the long haul.

The changes in how music is being heard may make a move away from short-term thinking inevitable. Streaming services such as Spotify, which ensure that an artists’ previous albums are available for discovery – and income generation – when a fan discovers a band via their fourth or fifth LP, could help lead labels away from breaking new artists and prioritising blockbuster hits.

What’s interesting about streaming is that the lifetime value proposition counters what’s been a 50-year mindset of front-loaded sales that decay over time,” Page argues. “This isn’t to suggest one model is better than the other, as sales are transactions which lead to consumption, whereas streams are consumption without transaction. But it will involve a mindset shift of watching new bands go into week one with, say, 400,000 streams, and then watching that figure grow, and not decay, over time.”


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/16/which-is-the-best-music-streaming-service-spotify-apple-music

Music streaming is on the rise: in 2015 in the UK fans played 26.8bn songs on audio-streaming services alone, with another 26.9bn streams of music videos on services like YouTube. This means that alot of music is coming from the internet and isnt being shown on the video. Other streaming services like spotify has been doing really well. it launched in 2008 and has been steadily improving since then. Many of the new features added in the last year or two have focused on helping you discover music.

Playlists are key to that: Spotify has a wide range that are updated with new songs every week, but it also has a deep catalogue of playlists created by outsiders: labels, media, musicians and fans. Follow a few, and you’ll have a regular supply of new tunes.

Every Spotify user gets their own Discover Weekly playlist too, updated every Monday with 30 new songs that its recommendation algorithms think you’ll like, based on your own tastes and those of people like you. It’s an excellent idea. Spotify has better social features than its rivals, with the ability to add friends and see their playlists and listening, as well as a built-in messaging system to ping music back and forth. Creating and sharing your own playlists is easy too.Another strength is the system for following musicians’ profiles and getting notifications when they have new music out. A recently introduced Concerts feed shows you upcoming, nearby gigs by artists you’ve listened to, which is useful.

Spotify’s free tier has audio advertising, but is missing offline listening and – on mobile – the ability to pick tracks on-demand, although you can play an artist’s catalogue on shuffle mode. Pay £9.99 a month, and you get full access (including offline), no ads, and a higher-quality streams option.

Apple music-Where Spotify falls down is its family plan, which is more expensive than rivals. You can add up to four extra accounts for £4.99 each, but that means you’ll pay £29.95 a month for a family of five compared to Apple Music and Google Play’s £14.99 for six. In this case some peopel would rather go to Apple or Googles play as they are cheaper and it works out cheaper. Sometimes because Apple is known more older people would want to stay with Apple.Apple raced to 10 million paying subscribers six months after launch – a milestone it took Spotify nearly six years to reach – so Apple Music is catching on.

Another unique feature, Apple Music Connect, remains a misfire. It could be brilliant: a mix of Twitter, Instagram and SoundCloud where musicians post exclusive stuff including raw demos. Few are using it to that extent yet, though.

Dedicated iTunes haters won’t enjoy Apple Music’s interface, but navigating your way around isn’t too hard, even if creating playlists is a pain. It’s less social than Spotify too: there’s very little sense of what your friends are listening to.Apple was early on to the family plan idea: pay £14.99 a month and you can have up to six people on your account. Needless to say, Apple Music works well on Apple TV, its recent launch on Sonos was welcome, and contrary to expectations, its Android app is pretty slick too.

Google play- service has a neat, stripped-down design: plenty of white space in contrast to Spotify’s darker design. Searching artists, albums and tracks is easy, as is creating your own playlists.

There’s a good introduction feature that asks you for your favourite genres and artists, which will help tune Google Play’s recommendations for playlists, albums and radio-style stations. The playlists and stations are good, based – like those on rivals – around specific genres, themes and activities.Like Apple Music, Google Play’s stations can be surprisingly specific: Ambient Scandinavian Stargazing, Sad Rappers and Girl Hold My Earrings – the latter specifically for women spoiling for a fight after someone has stolen their man. Contrary to what you might expect of Google, there’s a very human touch to all this. More stereotypical is the lack of many social features beyond the ability to share your playlists on social networks. As with Apple Music, what your friends are listening to and recommending is something you’ll have to find elsewhere.

For anyone using Google’s cloud-music storage service, Google Play Music works seamlessly with that: you can upload your downloads collection – most easily by dragging and dropping it in the Chrome web browser – with space for up to 50k songs.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/29/music-streams-downloads-mark-mulligan

Streaming music is cannibalising download sales. It’s a phrase anyone connected with the music industry is hearing a lot about in 2014.It’s a technological shift causing a lot of panicked flapping about, from an industry that counts “panicked flapping about at technological shifts” as one of its core skills.It shouldn’t be this much of a shock: the idea of an eventual transition from downloads to streams – and from ownership of music to access to it – has been talked about since the early days of legal download stores.

What’s causing the flapping in 2014 is the current pace of the transition, as big music markets – the US especially – have been taken by surprise with how quickly download sales appear to have peaked, then tipped into decline.Many musicians are worried that royalties from streams of their songs won’t make up for falling sales in their CDs and downloads. Meanwhile, some music executives who see the rise of streaming as inevitable are fretting at losing control of the transition.

It also warns that 45% of people who buy downloads are now also streaming music, and that so far, only 15% of free music streamers have signed up for a trial of a paid service. And Mulligan has views on why the current transition is shocking people, despite having been talked about for a decade.“Anything that requires consumers to adopt new technology always takes a while to happen. It’s very easy to over-estimate the near-term impact of a new technology, and under-estimate the long-term impact. We’re somewhere between those two points with music,” he says.“Every new generation of music service steals from the last generation’s customers. Apple stole Amazon’s best CD buyers, and Spotify has now stolen those same customers from Apple – or at least the same sorts of people.” This is what competing does. It makes people take the streaming services away all the time. Some people think that  only Apple really made a success of selling music downloads, that market is still weighted towards more tech-savvy early adopters: the kind of people who were also first to realise that paying £9.99 a month for unlimited access to something like Spotify was a good deal.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/09/facebook-planning-music-streaming-service

Now that people have seen how big the music industry can be they are wanting to be in that same game. For example, big companies like facebook are deciding if they should make the streaming service for them too. This means that everyone can see how good and popular its becoming and social media wants to do the same because it will make them popular too.
According to the music and tech news website Music Ally, which cites sources speaking off the record, Facebook is planning to follow its trial of native videos – videos that play only within Facebook, rather than on a parent site such as YouTube, and an experiment that is likely to include music videos – with an audio streaming service. Music Ally notes that “its plans to monetise music videos [are] an important stepping stone towards the on-demand audio service”.Streaming has become an increasingly important part of music industry revenues. In 2014, 9% of worldwide digital revenues came from ad-supported streams, and 23% from subscription streams, according to the global industry body IFPI. The number of paying subscribers worldwide grew by 46.4% last year, with subscription revenues rising by 39%, making it the fastest growing revenue stream.

LR

Learner response

WWW: Brave-if foolish- attempt to answer the identies questions.
EBI: Answer a differnt question and write three paragraphs for it.

section A-

Basic analysis was done. Need to make sure that i show critical autonomy, make refrences to the media products etc. I need to show media concepts and relate back to the question.Make refrences to both media products. Need to include media theories and concepts in order to get more marks. Give examples and show some issues and relate back to the question.Use wider context and make sure that the examples from other media debates are used. Realte back to the question.Use wider context and use a range.

Section B-

Basic analysis was done again. Need to make refrence to the question and make sure that the question has the right refrence.Need to make sure that i use media globalistaion and talk about media consumption and media manipulation.

Question 1- I need to make sure that i write more for this question and write what needs to be there. I need to not talk in general and need to make sure that i refer back to the question and talk about what the question is really asking. I need to add quotes, do analasyis, and use NDM to help answer the question. Mention concepts and relate back to some products.

Question 2- I need to answer the question and relate back to it again. I need to make sure taht i add theories and media debates. This is something that i need to make sure that id o and ensure that i do it properly. I need to make sure that i give  arange of examples that includes everything.

Question 3- I need to relate back to the question and make sure that i use alot of information to help answer the question.I need to write a clear evaluation and make sure that what i am writng is specific.


Question 6

One of the greatest benefits of NDM is that they have enabled audiences to set their own agenda in terms of how they use media. Does evidence from your case study support this view?

I think that the NDM has become a popular and well known around the world. NDM has affected everyine and its evrywhere. New and digital media have a wide range of audiences that like differnt things and that are intrested in differnt things. For example, you have people that like music, news, technology etc. How audeinces choose to see and view these things is up to them. You have audiences that follow certain things on social media like daily mail, their artsist that they like etc. There are many different things that people are intrested in and like.

When people sue technology they use it many different ways. You can watch thihgs on your smart phone, on the computer etc. They wnat to use it in a way that they canm express themselves too. For example bloggers, they blog what they want or how they feel or what they think matters and set it asa post. They then see how the audience that they are targeting sees them. Having the NDM helsp the audeince become who they are. On instagram some people may show a fake version or wannbe version of tehmsleves. They may post things that they really like but dont talk about or tell anyone about in real life. This could be because they dont like to share things but feel comfortbale showing their real selves behind a screen.

As NDM enable audeinces to to set their own agenda its good as they then have soemhting to look forward to. Technology changes all the time and that when they show how well the media has changed its good as then they have something to look at. The new technology does enable audiences to access many things and be around differnt things that they may not have had before. Thsi is why its good that they get a oppertunity to access NDM.

fact sheets

There are many things happening in the music industry. The music industry has always been a big thing and will always be. there have been some things in the industry. The music industry is a global business that generates profit by selling musical recordings in both physical and digital formats to media audiences. the music industry is a complex and competitive business  and record companies and labels are continually devising new ways of attracting audiences to consume tjeir products. the word music industry refers to all the businesses that are responsible for the creation and the marketing of music.In order to create a revenue a record company or record label enters into a recording contract with an artist.

They split the companies in two. The majors and the independents. the difference is that majors are different from the independents because they control all aspects of the production and distribution of their music.The main and well known record companies are universal music, sony, EMI, warner music. these weren't as popular as they were then but these are sill good famous record labels. Independent record labels are small scale companies who traditionally rely on distribution deals from other major companies.

record labels- scouting for new artists, financing recordings, packaging and distributions, marketing promotion and publicity. Record company is the company or organisation responsible for all the record labels inside the organisation. Major recording companies are using online distributions of music and social networking sites to reach potential  audiences  in a new way. The internet is being used in many ways. The internet is used for the sale of traditional physical formats, the marketing of music recordings. netcasts and live performances, the sale of music downloads.

Distribution and marketing is whole different thing that they need to worry about. this is when an artist has made and recorded their song. they then need to distribute and market it, in order to attempt and and make a profit for them and the company. radio companies must market the music properly and make sure that they target the righjt audience. This means checking the song and making sure that the song goes whith the theme that they needed. They can distribute on TV, music apps, radio etc. There is so many ways.get distributed by net labels which is websiytes, MP3 etc. This is for easier access.

Synergy is another way in which record companies  generate income via advertising and marketing their artisits in association with other brands or products. synergy occurs when one branch of a company to promote eachother.Synergy can occur between divisions of entertainment companies and also between the music industry. Theoretical concepts primary function of the music industry is to generate profit is argued by some theorsts to create a conflict as music is seen to be a creative art or an expression of ideas unlike for eg- advertising which is only focused on meeting to the economic function. Adorno and cultural industries-adorno was a critic of the captilist system and argued that popular culture or the culture industries maintained  capitalism. They achieve this by offering audiences generic products and consumer goods that act as diversions making them not intrested in change. Adorno believed the culture industries were responsible generating false needs.

Peterson and berger examine the concept of authenticity and ideology within the popular music. They realised that popular music had come from a place of resistance to dominant ideologies. Having all of this meant that the music industry was going in different places. They were trying to make the industry something that it wasn’t and that was upsetting a lot of people. Having a genre that people  didn’t want to be intrested in or do was hard for a lot of people as they wanted to do what made them happy and what things were good for them. They didn’t want to rely on other people and be told what they could or couldn’t do when they were the ones that were making the money for the bigger companies. A lot of bad things do happen in a music industry that is wrong or not good.

2 articles

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/03/google-pulls-ad-blocking-app-for-samsung-phones

Google pulls adblocking app for Samsung phones

Google has pulled an adblocking app for Samsung phones from its Play Store just days after it was launched.The Adblock Fast app, which blocks ads in Samsung’s own mobile internet browser, disappeared from the store suddenly on Wednesday. The app had been supported by Samsung, which released a download enabling adblocking in late January.

• The app, which runs on Google’s Android software, had reportedly racked up 50,000 downloads since its launch on Monday, pushing it up download charts and making it more visible to users.
• A Google spokesperson refused to comment on Adblock Fast but said: “We can confirm that our policies are designed to provide a great experience for users and developers.”

Its good that Google want to make a adblock for Samsung phones.This is there for a reason and they cant help that they are going to make a new adblock for them as they want to be able to make the process wider for all phones.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-trust-should-be-scrapped-with-ofcom-taking-over-regulation-report-concludes-a6904856.html

BBC: 'No hiding place' for corporation under new regulation plan, says author of plan to scrap Trust

The BBC will find “no hiding place” for its failings under a regulatory shake-up giving Ofcom responsibility for overseeing the corporation, the author of an independent review commissioned by the Government has claimed.The BBC’s 94-year system of self-governance should be scrapped following a series of scandals, Sir David Clementi concluded.

• Created in 2006, the Trust was a “mistake,” Sir David said. “High pay, the remuneration issues, IT issues, are things that I have in mind because when they go wrong there is the question about which board is responsible.”
• Ofcom would provide independent regulation and a new BBC unitary Board, led by a heavy-hitting chairman supported by a majority of non-executive directors, would represent the interests of licence-fee payers and defend the BBC’s impartiality. Archie Norman, the former ITV chairman, has been mooted as a possible candidate for the post which would now effectively be a full-time job.