Industry and Audience Power Essay

  

“The internet has given audiences much more power than ever before.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

 

 

 Introduction

I agree with this statement to a large extent. This is because audiences now are more active than passive, and they could share/comment/like or dislike which could affect the persons/businesses reputation and of they make it big or not.

 

Music Industry

 

The music industry has been largely affected due to self-publication. There are advantages and disadvantages of this. A large advantage for audiences is that they can easily publicize themselves and potentially get signed by a record label. This is also and advantage of labels as there is less risk signing people if they have already shown they are able to perform due to the comment, shares, likes etc. An example of this is Justin Bieber as he started singing with his mum filming him as a young teenager. He got MILLIONS of views on his first video and has had a decently successful music career, being signed to 5 record labels. However, there are disadvantages to the audiences being able to comment how they feel. Often, people will leave hate comments. Also, trends do change very often, so a person could have 100 thousand views on one song, however their next one barely breaks 3,000 views. This could demotivate the producer and if views continue to stay low, then they may eventually quit.

Film and Television

Film and television have drastically been changed as ‘appointment to view’ is no longer popular. This is because of the invention of streaming services and on demand. This was HUGE because if a person missed a show, they could simply go to that show online and 'catch up'. Advantages of this are that audiences have wait less time before a season is released. This is better for audiences as they can watch the show all together rather than must wait for each individual episode. In addition, the choice of content is more varied. Alternatively, because seasons are released at once, this leads to binge watching, which wastes away the day as you are watching a full season takes time considering most episodes take half an hour to an hour. In addition, these streaming services cost money, and every if you have an account, inappropriate content is much more  available to an audience that it should be restricted to. For example a mass murdering movie is available to a young audience due to distressing scenes.

Print (Newspaper)

 Print news paper has been substantially altered as people don't need the shop daily to get news, because nowadays news is spread everywhere, like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. An advantage of being able to gain news everywhere is that anyone can post news and leak important information like if they had seen a missing person, if a controversial event occurred and to update people in the local area about important news. This could open jobs for some people as it gives them experience about journalism. Whereas, there is a large disadvantage which is faker news. This is very important as its difficult to differentiate the truth from the lies. In addition, if a person dislikes another, than it is very easy to lie about that person and tarnish their career and their livelihood.

Conclusion

I believe that the statement is true because of the power audience have available to them . In the music industry audiences have power as they choose who they like and don't and trends that are big at the time. In the film industry, audiences have the power of what shows do well due to word of mouth, if a lot of people say they don't like a show, then there is a large chance people wont watch it due to the bad reviews. In the newspaper industry,, anyone can post anything and this can lead to fake news.