Music Investigation Homework

Spotify
Spotify.com is a website that is like a music library, that allows the user to search for and listen to music online within the website. Links are also referrenced on the website for the user to follow to purchase the music.
Spotify contributes to the future of the music industry as it is a different way of listing and listening to over 6 million different tracks of music, so that any user can use the website for research into various artists and bands for their music archive, and ultimately use this website to branch out to other website that they can purchase the music that they desire. It helps companies join together and profitise, popularise and expand the music industry.
This could be an important area for debate in media studies as it reviews how the music industry us synergising together through technology, advertising, and buying products.

Last.FM
Last FM is a radio and website that user's can subscribe to, and those users can create playlists that cater to their musical taste's based on music they have previously listened to on the website and the radio station. Last FM has changed the way that an audience can consume their music, as this website recommends music to the user that they may be interesting, remembers previously viewed music and, one feature that could be an interesting debating point in media studies and is affecting the future of the music industry, is how Last FM is compatible with a user's portable device via plug in or to their computer itself, so Last FM can stream to this device and this idea can also work with a user's social networking site. A user can create playlists and custom radio stations of their choice, and again, can stream it to their portable devices and computers, and can also distribute it to share with other users over Last FM's website itself. All these aspects are very much at the user's convenience and is putting the power of music into the audience's hands, but this could not be done without the resources that the music industry and Last FM provide, so ultimately the music industry is providing the tools for their audience to express themselves, to which Last FM and the music industry can evolve around and become more successful.

Urban Tribes and Subculture
Urban Tribes is a form of subculture, of which, according to French sociologist Michel Maffesoli, are small groups of people who share common interests. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar views, dress styles and behavioral patterns. This theory can relate to an exercise we did in class about bands/artists and their target audiences, and how music can influence this audience. We had to match pictures of bands with pictures of likely audiences, who would share similar music interests and dress sense as them. It is an important and very broad debating area of how audiences view music, the lyrics, and the artists themselves, to which some strings (familiarity) must tie them both together. It is useful to consider how audiences consume their music using this selective approach for buying patterns, how social groups and an individuals experiences and aspirations link to the music and subsequently their interest in this music, which can be categorised into genre. Examples of these urban tribes can be such as gangsta, punk, goth, and emo.