A long time ago before the era of computers and information storage people were limited in how or where they could listen to music. They could either play it themselves or listen to someone else sing or play it in front of them. A few centuries later the invention of the radio emerged and people were able to listen to whatever was being broadcast to them (provided they had a radio receiver and were in range of the transmitter). Fast forward a few decades and new technologies for recording music came about like the Phonograph Cylinder (1877), magnetic tape (1930's), Vinyl Record (1948), compact cassette (1963), and Compact Disc (1982). These types of media allowed people to listen to music as they please although all of them had various limitations with the media type and machines which played them. New digital media formats emerged and more portable media players were developed. This created a desire for music lovers to collect music and build a vast digital library. File sharing has become a primary means of getting music. Now with increasing technology and the rise of the Internet we have cloud music services which promise to give unprecedented access to music. This type of file sharing uses interfaces which allow people to access music across a wide variety of devices, including computers, MP3 Players, smartphones and video game consoles. People can collect a nearly unlimited amount of music and enjoy it in more places than ever before. These services use the file sharing technology of Cloud Computing to deliver music. They utilize computer servers connected to the internet to let you access information. There are two types of cloud storage music services. One of them is similar to the radio. This version takes listening to the radio on a new level. Services like Spotify allow people to search and add or delete songs to a music library allowing the user to create their own personal radio station.
The other type of music file sharing cloud gives the user much more freedom. These services like the Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music store your music remotely and acts like an external hard drive for your music. Alternatively, you might be able to download the actual file to a device which will allow you to play the music anywhere regardless of being connected to the internet. These services usually have a limit to the number of songs one can keep in their library and the fact that most of the music must be bought brings about the popular use of peer-to-peer file sharing applications in order to build extensive music libraries. There are many application services to download music which usually involves file sharing amongst peers. Applications like Blubster, BearShare, BitTorrent and many others allow files to be shared between the individual users of the service. This includes videos, documents and any other type of digital media as well as music files. Although this type of file transfer is usually free, there are issues of downloading a virus and whether or not the sharing of these files is legal and not breaking any Copyright laws.
Although it was interesting reading about how the distribution of music and data in general as evolved over time, I feel that you used too many examples. All you examples were spot on but I think you should have expanded your explanation of at least one of them. Also, you need to write your post in a word processor because I noticed quite a number of grammatical errors that could easily be caught by it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jonathan, I'll have another read through and do some checks.
ReplyDeleteHey David,
ReplyDeleteI think quite the opposite, it is great that you cite multiple examples and link to their pages, so that if people are interested they can investigate those specific services for themselves. Although it would be worthwhile to expand more on some of your prominent examples, don't be afraid to cite numerous examples for people to check out, so that if there is something I have never seen before, I can be one click away form learning all about it. Great content and direction, as well as choice of pictures to accompany your blog. Also great analysis on the way music sharing has begun to be embraced by many new services, as these ideas have changed the way people access data across the internet. Good efforts.
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteAs a music lover, I love finding new songs. I happen to use Spotify myself. However , I do realize how easy it is to have illegal ways to file share. I have never hear of some of the applications you mentioned so it would be nice if you had put a little more on some of them.
The blog was fun to read and I got a nice overview of the music industry and the ways music makes its way to people's ears. Unfortunately there was a lack of computer science(y) examples. You didn't go into depth about cloud storage and P2P and how they work. Maybe it's just me but when I read a blog I want to get an in-depth view of a topic from the bloggers point-of-view. Otherwise your blog is amazingly well layed out and it looks visually attractive. If you would add more science into your blog then I would say it's perfect!
ReplyDeleteHi David,
ReplyDeleteI want to say that I really enjoyed your blog because of all the information you provided. It was not clustered but spread out into paragraphs which was very organized. However, the one thing that I would have loved to see is more of your personal voice because I could see that you are a great writer. In addition, don’t forget to include the sources from where you got your information from. Keep up the good work.
I think the way you arrange out the history of music and how it has change since then is very interesting. However, there is a little details here of how it is really related to file sharing. You mentioned a couple of cloud music services that are available to us right now, however, you only mentioned briefly about how it is related to file sharing. If you would chose only an aspect of file sharing as your main topic, the blog be seem more focus.
ReplyDelete