Page 183 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

ONLINE

objectivity can be honestly striven for by professionals, but is still, on-
screen, an effect of semiotic and other textual strategies.

ONLINE

If someone is online they have entered a digital communications
network. The term is most frequently used in reference to the
Internet, whereby a modem carries information to and from the
online user via telecommunications infrastructure (the ‘line’). When
devices such as printers are online, they are ready to receive data from
a separate source such as a computer.
See also: Connectivity, Internet

ONLINE MUSIC DISTRIBUTION

Made possible by MP3 technology, online music distributors provide a
forum where users can swap and download music files of their favoured
artists. The most famous of these, Napster, offered a free facility to its
users to download and swap MP3s before trading was suspended in
2001. The music industry claimed that online music would deprive
both the industry and artists of the income required to keep popular
music alive, just as they did when recordable sound cassettes arrived in
the late 1970s. Yet this industry, using intellectual property rights,
nowstands to benefit most from the newsystem of content delivery.
Recent developments in online music distribution suggest that it is
not so much the availability of music on the Internet that concerns the
music industry majors but rather the fact that it is free. Napster, having
been bankrupted previously as pirates, was relaunched on a
subscription-only basis with funding from industry giant Bertelsmann.
The other music label giants have also got in on the act. Both PressPlay
(a joint venture between Sony and Universal) and MusicNet (funded
partially by Warner, EMI and Bertelsmann) offer subscription-based
services but with more stipulations than during the previous era of file
sharing. PressPlay, for example, allows 50 downloads per month, with
only two tracks per artist permitted in that period. Additionally, if
subscription lapses, tracks that have been downloaded are no longer
accessible.
The shift from copying to borrowing or hiring music is not all that
is apparent in the post-Napster environment of online music
distribution. The business practices of the music industry are now

168