essay 500-800

The internet has given audiences much more power than ever before.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Over time, the internet has developed a variety of things to do on the internet for audiences and it's grown so much that everyone's interests come into action, even the internet has grown powerful and technology keeps developing along with the media products that are being provided to the audience by the producers. I think the internet makes the audience more AND less powerful because there are many things that can happen on the internet such as audiences developing their own opinions and debates of many topics and the audience themselves can also become a producer so they have a part in both the audience and as a producer.

Since the rise of the industry, music has increased in technology and platforms to upload music content, there have been promotion services and more access to music content like Spotify and Vevo as well as Sound Cloud. Bedroom bands’ artists are able to self-publish music, so they can’t back from the card label once they’ve published their music. Audiences have benefited from the rise of digital media as they have more variety and choice to discover new arriving artists rather than being forced to listen to what the producers’ release. Services and opportunities like ‘bedroom bands’, Spotify and Apple Music help the audience to decide what’s in their favoured interest as there are now things such as ‘Recommended’ music which provide music similar to what the consumers listen to, that they haven’t heard before. The inconvenience of word of mouth advertising for the producers is that producers have limited amount of artists, who are commendable, that they can sign, which can lead to a decrease in profit for them. If audiences are unwilling to pay for music artists’ music, then those music artists’ will be barely recognised and their fame/popularity will drop since they are charging audiences. The issues for audiences in having so much content available to them are that it would be harder for them to choose out of what they want to use since they have limited time.

Since the rise of the internet, the film and television industry has allowed streaming catch-up services, which are readily available on demand; there has also been the rise of technology of mobile and laptops, which have also given consumers more opportunity to watch film and TV anytime, anywhere. Audiences have benefited from the rise of digital media as they have access 24 hours a day. Apps like Showbox offer consumers more variety and choices with films and TV - they aren’t restricted to things on TV or cinemas. Subscription services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime help the audience in a way where they can enjoy movies and shows since they can also binge watch them, but it provides opportunities that aren’t anywhere else. Binge-watching a TV series on a subscription service ties consumers in for periods of time because of the costing. By watching TV shows and films on a small screen, this affects the viewing experience in a negative way since they won’t be able to see what’s happening in the viewing clearly and it might be too small to find the intricate details within the film/series. Companies are producing less interesting films and TV series because they take time to release exclusive platforms such as sequels and so on so forth, but they might not earn as much money since people may keep binge-watching the same shows/movies over and over, which companies can’t benefit from. Due to this, there are also limitations with those who are not confident with technology since they might not know much about subscription services and movie-streaming apps/websites.
Since the rise of the internet, the news industry has increased in online news which is occasionally free, ‘citizen journalism’ has also increased where anyone can report the news live and print sales have declined because of the rise of online news coverage, so people don’t read newspapers as often anymore. The internet has changed in the way audiences can access news because the news is updated more frequently and print newspapers is usually outdated since news often changes. The environment has also benefited to moving content online such as videos and gifs and there are more choices of news platforms to choose from. But there is news known as ‘Fake news’, this is problematic for audiences because sources and facts cannot be regulated sometimes and false rumours can spread around through ‘Citizen Journalism’ just to have a better reputation and to find out gossip depending on the type of news they intend to show to the audiences. Seemingly, ‘Pay Wall’ still has to pay for some articles online.

This shows how the audience is both less powerful and more powerful at the same time due to the fact that technology becomes more advanced and improved, even though few audiences don’t have much experience with technology, they can always learn through people who do have experience. They can share lots of things online and on the internet and producers’ can try to get what they want too.