There’s lots to say about yesterday’s new law, which prevents junk food from being advertised to children. However, I’m not particularly interested in the predictable ‘nanny state’ argument, which I am sure will surface elsewhere. Nor will I touch on the technicalities, which may well prove to be quite absurd.
First, I think that those who campaigned for the law may soon find that it is a hollow victory. For example, groups such as Netmums supported the legislation in order to protect their children. They reason that if the adverts for junk-food are banned, their children will be less predisposed to buy things that are unhealthy for them. Therefore (the logic goes) the kids are saved from an exploitation of sorts.
However, the unintended consequence of the ban is that TV channels will look for other advertisers to provide them with revenue. Yesterday we heard they had found such an income stream… from car manufacturers. By advertising to children, these new advertisers believe they can build up brand loyalty and demand amongst young people, who will be more likely to buy their product when they reach an age of majority. It’s the ultimate long term marketing strategy, yet has a sinister air to it, and I doubt the Netmums’ activists will be too happy with this alternative. And since we know that car adverts are the elusive sixth element, its all the more worrying – We just don’t know what effect early exposure will have on the extra-absorbent minds of our youngsters.
Second, the idea of an advertising ban seems outdated. The initial premise – that children are captive audiences – is becoming less true as technology develops. These days, TV audiences are able to bypass advertising on their way to content. I watched an entire series of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip on the More4 channel, without glimpsing any of the adverts: I used the fantastic Sky Plus features to fast-forward my way to the drama. I do enjoy my American TV shows, and I’ve managed to see three series of 24 and three of Lost, the first season of Prison Break and the entire West Wing canon, without troubling myself with ad-breaks. This is all because of DVD technology, only truly ubiquitous in the last few years. And when the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war is resolved, we’ll have even easier access to the best entertainment around, without concerning ourselves with advertisements.
Banning one particular ad genre seems slightly pointless, when the entire concept of TV ad-breaks is under threat. Concerned mothers and politicians should turn their attentions to cross-media marketing campaigns and product placement instead.
Tag: Internet Philosophy (Page 29 of 39)
At the Social Market Foundation on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat Leadership Candidate Nick Clegg began a speech by outlining the technological context of 21st Century politics. It is a good approximation of my own view. He said:
… the innovations and technological advances that are already shaping and defining the 21st century – Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube – are about something very different: they are about creating the tools that will enable people to deliver services to each other.
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Sometimes its nice to return to those sites where one has left a comment, to see if anyone responded to it. Some blogs have a feature which notifies you when someone else responds. There is even a Web 2.0 application which does that job for you.
It was in such an act of trawling that I happened across a comment on Dave Hill’s post about the Amazon Kindle. The comment is a week old now, but still worth a response. Chip says:
I do fear that it would mark the death of novels in the way that MP3s are destroying the recording industry.
I think this is to mistake evolution for death. MP3s may be breaking the Music Industry’s current business model, but I see no reason why the model cannot change, to adapt to the new technology. At present, the way music is created and published is an anachronism. The standard album of about twelve tracks is a hang-over from the vinyl days – that was all you could fit on a 12 inch playing at 33 1/3 rpm. These days, since most music is released on CDs, you can fit a lot more than twelve three minute tracks onto an album. Double, in fact, yet the artists rarely use this free space.
Likewise with the three-and-a-half minute ‘single’ track, so designed for convenient radio airplay. If, in the future, most music is advertised online (via MySpace, say, or Last.fm) then time constraints are less of an issue. Control is returned to the artist, who can play on for five or ten minutes if they feel the need, without being labeled ‘indulgent’.
So, the idea persists that a musician should produce a coherent body of work of about three-quarters of an hour, cut up into twelve tracks, and that they should do this about once every eighteen months or so. The costs involved in this (studio time, a big marketing drive, and maybe a tour) have to be recouped by the label. All these considerations feed into the business model… and when the income demanded by this business model is undercut by MP3 downloads and sales, the new technology is blamed for killing off an industry.
The way music is published clearly needs to change, and embrace the new digital formats. Instead of producing an album per year, why not simply release a new MP3 track each month, or each week, maybe as part of a podcast? This would actually be more interesting, since fans could observe the development of an artists style over a much longer period. If the artist publishes a blog, and maybe a dynamic playlist (“Currently listening to…”) then the fans will be able to engage with the artist and their work on a much deeper level. Its no longer a case of ‘the difficult second album’ so much as the ‘difficult second year’.
As computer software becomes better, and computer hardware becomes cheaper, publishing high-quality audio becomes easier too, meaning that more people can create music. It is no longer the preserve of the elite, in their ivory studios, backed by big labels. If production costs go down, then break-even points are much lower, and fewer sales are required in order to recoup costs. And by releasing fewer tracks at a time, but with greater frequency, musicians will see a quicker return, too.
Finally, this model should also foster greater creativity, and better music. A favourite essay of mine, by a digital artist named Momus, discusses this point at length: For something to be ‘mainstream’, he says, it necessarily needs to be generic. Artists have to smooth their edge if they wish to appeal to a diverse audience with its own tastes (A pop music track of any given era sounds much like any other pop music track from the same era. This is because they are all compromises, attempts on the middle-ground). However, in the digital age, the global audience is big enough that a small yet viable audience can be achieved without the compromises of ‘mainstream’. Musicians can find a fan base, and give it what it wants. Even better, with a weekly or monthly MP3 release, the cost of ‘flopping’ is greatly reduced, allowing more risk-taking, experimentation and collaboration.
The MP3 format may be killing the music industry, but it is also the stork of a new kind of social market for music, where the money is spread amongst a greater number of artists. The distribution and pricing models are not in place yet, but at least musicians are trying new methods. Radiohead offered fans the chance to pay whatever they felt like for In Rainbows. Prince gave away his latest album free with the Mail on Sunday.
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I enjoyed the story about a King Juan Carlos’ rant becoming a ring-tone hit in Spain and Venezuela. The King’s outburst came during a summit in Chile, after the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Spain’s ex-Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, a “fascist”.
In Venezuela, a group of students who oppose Mr Chavez’s government have also been downloading the ringtone, a US newspaper reported.
“It’s a form of protest,” a 21-year-old student in Caracas told the Miami Herald. “It’s something that a lot of people would like to tell the president.”
It is yet another way in which the ubiquity and pervasiveness of technology undermines authoritarian power. In itself, it may not change or bring down a regime. It is, however, a form of protest and dissent that cannot be easily suppressed. It therefore emboldens, and gives succour to opposition.
While the internet can help spread campaigns, it can also undermine them. In 2003, Howard Dean looked set to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, until his infamous “Dean Scream” took the web by storm.
My post earlier today, regarding when to take up an argument, and when to let it go, was really just a preamble to a response to Neil Clark’s article on Comment is Free (via Sunny at LC).
Anyone who deviated from the official party line – as laid down by a self-appointed uber elite of British bloggers – faced a cyberspace lynch mob, more in keeping with Nazi Germany than a country which is supposed to pride itself on its support for free speech.
For the self-appointed uber elite of British political bloggers, the fact that someone, not of their number, and who did defy their three line-whip on the Iraqi interpreters issue – was nominated – and then won, in a free public vote, the title of “Best UK Blog” in the most prestigious prize in blogging, is too much to bear.
In the case of the Iraqi interpreters campaign, “self-appointed” we may be. The very nature of single-issue pressure groups is that they consist of people who stand up for a cause they believe in, filling a void that is not being filled by other organisations or political parties. We have certainly never claimed a democratic mandate, or to speak for anyone other than ourselves. The campaign gains its authority, and support, entirely from the strong arguments we have made in favour of the Iraqi interpreters.
Neil’s post on Friday matters, and is deserving of a response and a criticism, because he misunderstands, or perhaps misrepresents, the nature of the debate. The outcry that followed his “Iraqi Quislings” issue was not some orchestrated, strategic smear. It was not the fact that he had crossed or questioned the party line that raised hackles. Rather, it was the reactionary and ill-considered manner of his objections which provoked a response. Bloggers from the campaign were right to vigorously defend their stance, and should not be criticised for doing so. It is a shame that Neil now chooses to ignore the substantive points in the arguments, and instead retreat to ad hominems that so readily invoke Nazi Germany. It is odd that someone who has just won a best blogger online poll, should immediately resort to such a discredited line of attack. As Sunny says: bizarre.
Update
Unity, another self-appointed uber-liberal uber-blogger, takes a fisk to Neil’s article. Given my comments above and earlier today, I suppose I should say that I do wonder at the efficacy of ‘fisking’. I fear it will simply provoke more of the wrong sort of debate.
Again, I ask: At what point should the arguments-about-the-arguments be abandoned? To resort to ridicule and satire is slightly frustrating, I feel, because at that point the attempt to convince your correspondent blogger (and their own dedicated readers) will fail.