This were the questions I came up with for the Niki page during the last workshop of the semester;

Interview with fan 

Host: Thanks Josh for your thoughts, it’s so good to hear straight from an artist who’s in the game and right there in the midst of all this rapid change. Now, we are going to talk with one of the millions of Spotify fans. Thanks for joining us on the show Daniel. What makes you so interested in spotify?

Daniel: Well, Spotify makes it so easy to find the right music for every moment – on your phone, your computer, your tablet and more.

Host: What would you say is the biggest strength of spotify?

Daniel: There are millions of tracks on Spotify. So whether you’re working out, partying or relaxing, the right music is always at your fingertips, and we can also choose what you want to listen to.

Host: What makes Spotify differ from other online music streaming services?

Daniel: Spotify is generally free and legal to use, and it’s convenient and easy to download.

Host: How many users are there online?

Daniel: Spotify has more than 24 million users, and it has converted more than six million of them into paying subscribers. If you pay a small fee each month, you can listen to it on the go without the need for an internet connection or ads to interrupt your listening session.

Host: Would you recommend others to use Spotify?

Daniel: Absolutely.

Host: Great, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us! That’s about all we have time for today. As you can see, there are a huge number of people in favour of Spotify, but also a smaller but important crowd who are not yet convinced of its viability and helpfulness to the music industry.

But, whether we have a problem with it or not, the reality is that it is here, and online streaming is probably only going to grow and get bigger. All we can hope for is that as more and more people flock to  programs such as Spotify, that royalties for artists both small and great would increase. Because, at the end of the day, musicians are the ones making this all possible.

Thanks for listening.

During the 2nd last workshop of the semester, we continued our discussion of our Niki page on Spotify. Some of the questions I came up with were, what were the strengths and weaknesses of Spotify, how would it benefit others, and what are the ways we can enjoy the services.

Another story, this time about Simon Gittany, who was sentenced to at least 18 years in jail, for murdering her fiancee Lisa Harnum. Simon threw his fiancee to her death from the balcony of their 15th floor apartment in inner Sydney in middle of 2011. His punishment was handed down by the NSW supreme court Justice Lucy McCallum, who also heard about Gittany’s previous potential for violence, which includes an incident in which he bit off part of a policeman’s ear in 1994.

A big story emerging recently was a former prisoner Schapelle Corby who was recently released after serving nearly ten years in Kerokaban prison in order to swap life in a private villa at Sentosa Seminyak. Her first stop after being released on parole on Monday morning was a luxury private resort and spa frequented by celebrities and hipsters in the upmarket neighbourhood of Seminyak.

The exclusive resort, was also used by favourite of former Olympic swimmer Michael Kim, which has private villas only, each with their own swimming pool, marble floors, tropical garden and gourmet kitchen.

The final reading for this course was titled ten dreams of technology by Steve Dietz. The ten dreams consists of;

1) The Dream of Symbiosis, 2) The Dream of Emergence , 3) The Dream of Immersion , 4) The Dream of World Peace , 5) The Dream of Transparency , 6) The Dream of Flows, 7)The Dream of the Open Work, 8) The Dream of the Other ,9) The Dream of the New Art, 10) Hacking the Dream

Explored in this week’s reading is the properties of network theory of actor-networks. There are several misunderstandings are due to common usages of the word network itself and the connotations they imply. The first mistake would be to give it a common technical meaning in the sense of a sewage, or train, or subway, or telephone ‘network’. The second misunderstanding is easy to lift: the actor-network theory, where it has very little to do with the study of social networks.

This was probably the toughest reading for me during the course so far, and I’m glad that I was able to get through the symposium. One of the points that I picked up during the symposium is that actors doesn’t generally have to be humans it could be a object or a building. You could also check out Mardi‘s blog for more in depth analysis.  Continue reading Reading 6.1 – Actor network theory →

Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider, launched in October 2008. The platform is owned by Spotify AB, a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange since 2018 through its holding company Spotify Technology S.A. Spotify’s global headquarters are in Stockholm, Sweden.

Spotify offers digital copyright restricted recorded music and podcasts, including more than 60 million songs, from record labels and media companies. As a freemium service, basic features are free with advertisements and limited control, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. Users can search for music based on artist, album, or genre, and can create, edit, and share playlists.

Recently, my group and I presented a rough cut of our project to our class in Broadcast Media, based on the theme summer, regarding beach safety. Our project was shot in Mills Beach, Mornington. It was a beautiful day, the location was fantastic and everything went smoothly. We were lucky to have very accommodating and helpful interviewees who were patient and allowed us to boss them around and move props around and even assisted us in re-enacting a beach rescue. Below is the rough cut of the video we shot. For my information, you could also check out Mardy blog post 🙂

http://youtu.be/yIQUOXN5oM0

This week’s 5.2 reading, was regarding Database as Symbolic form, by Lev Manovich. One of the points I found interesting was  about Data and Algorithm, where not all new media objects are explicitly databases. Computer games, for example are experienced by their players and narratives. For example, in a game, the player is given a well-defined task – winning the match, being first in a race, reaching the last level, or reaching the highest score. It is this task that makes the player experience the game as a narrative. Everything that happens in a game, all the characters and objects that one encounters, either take that person closer to achieving the goal or further away from it.

Speaking on the topic of spotify, one of my favourite songs, which is Beam by Mako ft. Angel Taylor, was on my head as we were talking about this, I decided to upload this on my blog.