The site was an invitation only, bit torrent community, with a membership of around 180,000 members at the time of closure. The site’s rules included a strict policy that users could not pay for membership, required minimum upload/download ratios. Most users were young, high school, college aged students looking for a cheaper way to listen to a wide variety of music. Personally, I was a user of Oink until I let my ratio fall down too low, but now am glad I was kicked off as a user before the police raided it out. Consequently, was it right to completely shut down Oink with it being one of the most successful file sharing websites on the Internet today? Looks like we are all going to have to stick to those 99 cent songs on iTunes for awhile.

I believe there is a little more excitement when you physically go to the store and purchase a CD. The Mars Volta come out with a new album in January. Certainly,  I will go purchase the album at Best Buy or Waterloo. It’s a tradition of mine.  The benefit of this is that you have an actual copy of the record and artwork to view whenever you like. Many bands release concept albums and the artwork is an intricate part to telling the story. Purchasing a hard copy is more out of respect for the artist. They put the time into producing the music, so it should be viewed as the artist intended.

Also, what if your computer crashes and you lose all of your music? You are pretty much screwed and all the money that you spent on music pretty much goes straight down the drain. There are many people that could careless about physically owning a CD and its Artwork. Therefore, purchasing music on file sharing programs is more convenient for these people. I suppose it lies in the consumers hand!

Generally, users would pay fees to the content owners and libraries known as synchronization or needledrops. However, freeplay provides access to these features for free. To read further into how Freeplay works visit the website and check out the terms and conditions.

“Freeplay’s vision and continued mission is to expand the scope and depth of the Freeplay music library, and introduce additional offerings that set new standards as well as meet the production needs of creative professionals and users around the globe.”

This is just another example of how globalization with music and file sharing is constantly expanding and changing our lives. It was only a matter of time before websites like this would emerge. Now, we as students are provided with a legal form of downloading music for personal and academic use.

For more information visit:www.freeplaymusic.com

Globalization within the music industry has allowed many musicians to network for free and effectively. New and current musicians can utilize the internet to promote their band in a number of ways.

Myspace is very effective, it can be used to keep fans updated on upcoming shows, album releases, and general news about bands. Also, artists can give fans a preview of their new album by placing a few songs on the site. The band Radiohead, is allowing their fans to purchase their new album, In Rainbows, for as much as they feel like paying online. Fans can give no money or infinite amounts based on what they feel is fair.

File Sharing is yet another example of how technology is advancing in the modern day. itunes is the most popular version of file sharing. The music we use in our video project was all derived from the itunes store. File sharing, if legal, can be very effective for students, such as ourselves.

Technology advances at a very rapid pace. Above is a general overview of how technology effects our every day lives. However, one of the points we want to focus on is the music industry and its evolution with technology.

Musicians have many options that they they can utilize to create limitless sounds. I would like to focus on the different drum kits that are used today.

Drummers have an assortment of kits that they can use on stage and in the recording studio. A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals, and sometimes other percussion instruments. A modern day drum kit generally consists of:

1. Cymbals, including hi-hats
2. Snare drum
3. Kick pedal
4. Throne (seat)
5. Tom-Toms (tuned drums)
6. Floor Tom
7. Bass drum.

The 1980′s saw the introduction of what is called the electronic drum kit. Electronic drums allow the drummer to create many different sounds. Most electronic drum kits are utilized in the progressive or industrial rock genre. Here’s an example of a basic drum kit compared to a electronic drum kit.

As you can see there is a vast difference between the two drum kits. When an electronic drum pad is struck a voltage change is triggered in the force sensitive resistor. It is then transmitted into the drums memory or “drum brain.” It produces different wave forms and sounds. With electronic drums the drummer can sample non-percussive sounds and use them as their own drum sounds.

This is just one aspect that technology has advanced within the music industry. Musicians all over the world have access to this type of technology. Apple has introduced many music programs that already contain various drum kits installed in the computer. In our video we will be interviewing a musician/student from St. Edward’s. He explains how this technique is used by musicians today.

File sharing is a unique tool that everyone in the whole world has access to. It has evolved over the past decade, however there were legal issues that haulted file sharing for a short period of time…back in 2000.

Initially file sharing was a free product. Napster was probably the first file sharing program. This movement compelled me to become a huge music connoisseur if you will. It changed my life. It continued to evolve over the years, I didn’t think it was possible to evolve anymore than it had. I remember using these mp3 files for projects I had in school and on power point presentations.

Today itunes runs the file sharing world. Anyone who has an ipod uses file sharing in some sort of way. Think about how many people in the world have an ipod. I can only imagine the number of people who file share… probably a very large number!! File sharing should be the definition of globalization in the dictionary.

With the Apple company advancing technologically file sharing will continue to do so as well. The iphone stores mp3 files too. You can use songs from your itunes library as a ring tone or stream live music footage and format it to an mp3!

The link below introduces itunes U. It’s a program “giving higher education institutions an ingenious way to provide audio and video contents to students… School is about to become more inspiring.”

www.apple.com/education/itunesu