Music mapping? This remind me of the last articles about Pandora and connecting music by playing a song someone might like based on another band. Music-map.com was a great resource for music mapping. I decided to test it out. I typed in “blink-182” and waited for the results. Rise Against, The Offspring, Sum 41, Green Day. Yup, I love all those bands.

Next, I thought I’d try Shakira. Closest are Enrique Iglesias, Madonna, and Britney Spears. How interesting! Usually, if I’m listening to Shakira, I want more spanish music. Of course both Shakira and Enrique Iglesias are probably the most popular among english speakers. Typing in J Balvin, all of the musician that show up are spanish. Interesting to see where language and music collides

The other maps linked were very informative.  I thought it was fascinating to get a visual representation of music, music history, and see the connections between groups and artists. My favorite of the links was still music-map. I spent a good, solid 15 minutes tying in different artists I like and seeing what other artists pop up. I’m really thrilled to find this tool, I can use it to find new music!

Before these articles, I would have scoffed at the idea of there being music graders at Pandora. I have a bitter taste in my mouth when it comes to hearing the word “radio.” After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, radio started drastically change and became a formula. I detest listening to the radio even now. It’s always the same songs (and I like top 40 songs). I blame Arbitron and all the damn commercials.

In the article “Pandora’s ‘Music Genome Project’ explores the cold hard facts of how we interact with music” the author feels the same way I do about standard radio. “…its talent pool can look a little shallow. Not just the same artists but the same albums crop up repeatedly…” I know there are different channels, but my musical preferences can change in the time it takes one song to play. I’ve found myself listening to Shakira, then Tupac, The Offspring to Michael Jackson. That’s not going to fit in any sort of radio formula

I digress with all the insults. This human genome project is really interesting. I think it’s help break down music into the tiniest piece. Genres still have a lot of leeway for different sounds, but mapping music can really help someone hone in on what type of music they like is really interesting. I think this is an interesting concept, but I’m not sure what they will really be able to do with that data.

Even after reading on it, I have more respect for Pandora. It most likely won’t get me to listen to the program. It’s truly hard for me to appreciate the radio format when I have a software like Spotify where, with my paid subscription, I can no commercial and can scroll through and pick songs I like and make playlists. While I appreciate the adaptation, Radio is dying and that it only the fault of telecommunications companies.

MP3. Oh man. I was alive and coherent to see the rise of the MP3 format. I was quite excited to read this book. Although it was interesting when he started it off talking about Gnutella, a peer-to-peer network. The MP3 came alive with the world’s introduction to Napster. I remember downloading MP3s. “You mean, no CDs? Stored on my computer? And it’s free? Awesome.”

Eventually Limewire and frostwire were big. I used those more than I had used napster. Eventually I, like many others, switched to torrents. Most probably switched due to the virus and inability to know you were getting. Or know the quality. I was always upset to get a poor quality MP3. I still downloaded though. I once had over 4000 MP3s stored on my PC.

I’ve never really thought much about the actual files types of MP3s. I remember back in the day, there was 190kbs and 320kps. I always assumed it did involve how much data there was stores, but I never understood how much of a difference there could be in size from the original audio file. It’s fascinating to think that we are able to take an audio file and say, “oh this part is irrelevant to the listener, lets take it out.” It also makes you wonder if those parts were something that made music was it was originally: natural.

Side note: I remember my mom bought my brother an MP3 place one year, this was before the iPod. And the think was literally the size of a portable CD player. In a few years, MP3 plays were all the rage. Not only that, but Apple can attribute its true success to the MP3. Apple computers were not selling as much as PCs at the time, it was the invention of the iPod and the iTunes store that changed the company.

I appreciate how much love is going into the digital file of MP3 in this book. While it’s not the internet, as far and true revolutionary items, it’s still up there. Look at this digital age we have. Look at where music is. Look at how complex it can be (or if you’re a cynic, how much of a formula it now contains.)

One thing I really enjoyed about the book is the history it provides about hearing and sound combined with technology. We’ve covered quite a bit about this in class, but it’s still fascinating to have just understood hearing and recording on physical level. Then to digital and information levels. We can break down music not just into sound, but break it all the way down into binary, possibly.

For this week, I really found the information on passwords and security to be quite fascinating. I actually just lost my PlayStation account to a hacker and have to contact Sony (Which is harder than it sounds). I’ve also lost my Skype account to a hacker (Do you know how hard it is to contact them to get this fixed? I gave up.) I also lost my Origin’s account before. They tried to buy a video game, but my card info wasn’t saved. Thankfully, Origin’s was super easy and fast to deal with. What the hell, Microsoft.

I’ve only lost a few account, but it never has seemed to be a direct attacked here I was emailed and phished, because I wouldn’t lose multiple accounts at once, or have anyone actually charge my cards or anything of that sort.

In the article “Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger” by Dan Goodin, I was struck by the line, “The average Web user maintains 25 separate accounts but uses just 6.5 passwords to protect them” It got me thinking, how many accounts I had?

Let’s see.
Skype
4 different emails
4 Online forums accounts
Steam Account
Origin’s Account
Battle.net
Amazon
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Snapchat

That’s 16 accounts, and that took me about 15 seconds to come up with the list, so I know there are many more. Thankfully, I use more than 6 passwords, but I have ones a favor, and I tweak my passwords as well. But I’m not surprised to see such few passwords.

So many sites require specific requirements. Then, you have to remember them. Then you have to remember which site corresponds to what password. This is even harder when you can’t remember if the website has specific password requirements. No wonder people don’t have tons of passwords and it’s no wonder people store them in unencrypted files or on post it notes.

This digital age with such great technologic advances is making it harder to really completely protect yourself. Honestly, I’ve just given up to accept the fact it’ll happen, and just know to way to fix it.

Source: http://jtittleinnovations.com/blog/technology-serve-the-innovations/intellectual-property-is-an-important-legal-and-cultural-hipe/

On a week about copyright, it was funny to talk about land. Land is alienable. Why? Because land is property. It has ownership. It always made sense to me in the way that land does belong to the people, but it can’t always belong to everyone. After all, that’s what the public land, like national parks, is for.

When we talked about  intellectual property and corporations. Oh the land topic finally made sense. The idea of copyright being property: specifically intellectual property. How to protect your own property? Physically and with a contract. How do protect intellectual property that can be possible, easily accessed by the general public?  Patents.

A patent, “Prevent others from using it. You get completely ownership. You can to prove it is original and new and practical to get a patent.” How can a company hold ownership. If a company an owner? I felt silly when we discussed this in class, because I didn’t realize the full extent to which a company was considered a person. I can’t believe how naive I was, or possibly am.

When our discussion went into copyrights, that I had known a lot about, outside of the reading. I really enjoyed the wensite linked: https://unhappybirthday.com/.  It was an extremely simple website that went over what copyright and copyright infringement is.

I loved the discussion on how the copyright came to be, and the timeline of changes

• First copyright was termed  for 14 years, renewable if the author is alive
  • 1831, term changed to 28 years with 14 year renewal
  • 1909 term changed to 28 years with 28 year renewal
  • 1976 lifetime plus 50 years
  • 1998 lifetime plus 70 years

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse

I had no idea how crazy the changes had been, but I knew it was related to Walt Disney. I think with how media is currently, and the new social media, we need to take a look at copyright and public domain. While I know that Mickey Mouse is important to the Disney corporation and is a true icon, I think ti completely be unable to use it in certain situations is a disservice since it’s become such a known icon and is actually integrated into our culture and our past in the U.S.