How to Unsell a Product

The following is a MediaNote Classic. It was originally presented to MC101 classes in May 2016.

Cigarettes are bad for you. That has been apparent since the Surgeon General's report in 1964 on smoking and lung cancer.

And yet, more than a half century later a sizable percentage of young people continue to take up smoking. It is as though they are in a hurry to get to the sick and helpless years of their lives.

Your federal government has responded with a series of youth-oriented anti-smoking ads. Will they do any good? NPR reports.

Questions...

•These are PSAs, or Public Service Announcements. What other PSAs can you think of?

•Why is there music in ads?

•Fees collected from tobacco companies are put into anti-smoking campaigns. Are these ads a good way to spend that money?

•If you can sell shoes or cars in an ad, can you also sell anti-smoking in an ad? Or is this somehow different?

Don't Buy Music, Rent It!

iTunes helped the music industry find an alternative to declining CD sales. For about a decade, it was popular and up-to-date. But now streaming services supported by monthly subscription fees have gained popularity and iTunes suddenly looks like a fading business. NPR reports.

Questions...

•What are other examples of a type of a website or a type of media hardware that was popular for awhile, then faded in popularity?

•In the 1980s, music made a transition from vinyl to CD and 20 years later from CD to iTunes. Are we in the midst of another historic transition in how people buy music?

•As a consumer, do you generally prefer paying for things that you actually use (like iTunes or Kindle eBooks) or do you prefer a subscription approach (cable television)? What do you think of the Pandora approach where a basic service is free and the consumer pays for a more complete version of the service?

•In your opinion, do you think major recording companies (which generally promote mainstream musical acts) prefer the iTunes approach or the Spotify approach? What about small independent record companies or musical acts that put their music online without record company backing? Which approach do you think will do more to cut down on pirated music?

DIY Stardom

Your Humble Blogger has lost track of all the TV personalities who populate the hundreds, or thousands, or (maybe even) hundreds of thousands of shows on the tube. But can he recognize all the personalities who have sizable audiences on social media? YHB doesn't have a clue.

Almost by definition, social media stars are stars only to a narrow segment of the public. But can they make a living off that? Can they--just like Old Media stars--go on tour, connect with screaming fans, and be generally adored?

Apparently so. The Los Angeles Times reports.

Questions...

•Who are some social media stars that your parents probably don't know about?

•What is "crowdsourcing"? How is social media crowdsourcing entertainment?

•What is "disintermediation"? How are social media stars an example of disintermediation?

•Are there gatekeepers involved with social media stars and stardom? If so, who are these gatekeepers?

FYI: Here is the Official Music Video of Jack and Jack, the internet duo profiled in the Times article.

Dump the Disk?

How do you spell DVD? In a few years, it may be D-E-A-D. Sales of streamed entertainment is booming, while the sales of disks are falling. There are many reasons for this, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Questions...

•Will people always want to own physical copies of their favoriteTV shows, movies and music? Why or why not?

•What are the advantages of streamed video for the consumer?

•What are the advantages of streamed video for the studio or distributor?

•Who loses out with the streaming model?

Bye Bye Borders!

Borders stores always seemed so impressive. A huge selection of books, plus music, plus DVDs, plus a good newspaper and magazine section, plus greeting cards and fun gifts, plus a cool coffee bar, plus stuff I've probably forgotten.

Apparently, that caused the company to pin too much of its future on physical brick and mortar stores at a time when paper books are rapidly giving way to digital book players. NPR reports.

How To Be a Rock Star in 2011

The big recording companies are reeling. Record stores are pretty much dead. But musicians, if they are good and lucky and pick a good nice, can do surprisingly well by selling their tunes over the Internet. Jonathan Coulton is one of those Internet-made success stories. NPR reports.

Hearing the America of a Century Ago

We experience history through words, pictures and drawings in books. That works pretty well for transmission of facts, but how about more nuanced things like emphasis and attitude? Wouldn't it be great to have a rich historical archive of speeches and music and sounds.

And now we have that. The Library of Congress recently opened the National Jukebox, an online database of recorded music, speeches, spoken-word performances and other snippets of audio from a century ago. The Los Angeles Times reports.

Fighting Racism, One Ringtone at a Time

Alexandra Wallace is the former UCLA student who made an amazingly insensitive and unwise YouTube video about Asian students one day after the earthquake in Japan.

She realized her mistake within hours, and took her video off YouTube, but it was too late. Others reposted it and it went viral. UCLA's Chancellor made a video condemning Ms. Wallace's actions. Campus security recommended that she take her final exams at a specially-arranged place and time. Ms. Wallace apologized through the campus newspaper, and has reportedly dropped out of school.

Many have responded to the offending video. One of the most entertaining is by 23-year-old actor and songwriter Jimmy Wong, whose song "Asians in the Library" is on iTunes and is also available as a ringtone.

This is his YouTube video, which has nearly 3 million hits.

Hey, Crank Up That XBox!

The music business has been hurting in recent years. There's no secret about that. And I imagine song writers and composers haven't been doing very well, either. But here's a growth area for those who make music: video game scores. NPR reports.