The Golden Age of Media?

When I picture media today, I think of Youtube, Spotify, Itunes, and so forth.  The power of the internet; free access create music, videos, and games, and free to listen watch and play whatever you like.  So with all these new ways of expressing ones self through for a relatively cheap price is this where media should be heading, or is free actually limiting media in quality.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of quality is Youtube.  Granted there are a lot of good youtube channels out there, but the majority of videos on youtube are just trash.  So is Youtube really helping the video medium out by letting people who don’t know one thing about making a video, have free access to share whatever they want? I believe that the answer is yes and no.  Youtube I believe helps people realize whether they have talent in that specific medium or not.  Many people have gotten careers for making videos on youtube(case and point, Justin Bieber).  And also, you tube does a great job promoting artists music videos.  But there is also a downside to this, letting people listen to music on youtube eliminates the need to go out and buy a the product; you no longer need to go and buy an album because with technology nowadays you could always load up youtube and listen to the song for free. Also, the good youtubers that actually try and make good videos consistently have to spend countless hours and recourses to keep the viewer coming back, with a relatively low pay.

Spotify is another place where you can listen to music for free.  They say that every time you listen to a song on spotify you are giving money to the artist; but really, how much money are you actually giving them.  From what I found, every time you listen to a song on spotify for free, you give the artist an approximate $0.009.  For indie artists out there, putting your song on spotify wont do you much good.  Only the pop stars and popular music will actually make a little money off of spotify.  So rather than people going out and buying indie albums they just listen to it on spotify, barely giving them any money.

 I think what we see here is that with this free plan of entertainment, there is also a limitation and that the limitation seems to fall on the artists themselves.  But only time can tell if this plan will work for media or not.