My name is Richard Ferris but I go by Kazu. I enjoy playing tennis and table tennis and am a Communications and Digital Studies Major. I hope that you find what you need on my website and that you enjoy your stay.
Categories
This week, I went back to my website (this one) that I used for intro to digital studies and I put the first weekly summary on it.
I learned that digital fluency, digital citizenship, and digital praxis are all very important and round out introductory knowledge to the digital world.
Categories
Media Practice 7
Categories
Assignment 3
I will be analyzing the community of Minecraft Youtubers specifically on Twitter. This includes not only the tweets and communities of people on youtube who just so happen to play minecraft, but also the much larger communities that focus solely on one or several large youtube creators that center their content around minecraft and create big stories and things around it that can get their communities greatly invested in it.
When it came to who was a part of the community, when it was just minecraft youtubers in general it was mostly lots of people promoting their own small channels on twitch and youtube all related to minecraft and the occasional allegation towards a bigger minecraft youtube creator of something along the lines of cheating in the game or talking to minors.
When it came to the communities that surrounded the bigger youtuber minecraft content creators, it almost always revolved around their inside jokes, or what they were doing in their personal lives, or the lore that they have created in their minecraft servers that they make videos on by themselves or in collaboration with other big minecraft youtube content creators and so on.
The biggest personae in the space is being parasocial because when these mostly younger people in the audience are being fed this information about the creators’ personal lives and being with them all the time while they have fun in the game and in their servers and whatnot creates a sense of being their friend and that you even may know them personally on some level, which can be dangerous. However, this is very common when it comes to content creators’ audiences.
I hoped, when exploring this community, to understand if what I heard about it being very toxic and unforgiving to be on as an outsider was true or not, based on my thoughts of it being a community full of mostly younger people since the game that these youtubers are playing is minecraft, which is a game meant for everybody and is very popular with mostly younger audiences.
My relationship to this community is that I watch many youtubers that are friends with these minecraft youtubers that have these twitter communities. The youtubers that I watch occasionally will talk about when there is some drama on twitter over the minecraft youtuber twitter community doing something, usually in a negative light. I plan to engage in this space by simply scrolling through the posts and observing.
Through twitter, it is very easy for a lot of these posts, especially those who tend to post self promotion and other things that would only benefit them, to be lost in the void with little to no activity being seen on them. However, when it comes to the communities as a whole, there are many occasions, especially when the minecraft youtuber is doing something big or something has happened in relation to them or anything along those lines, where they band together, much like other big online communities on twitter such as BTS fans on twitter, and change something through sheer numbers and force of will. For example, putting anything to the top of the trending page on twitter for that day, or if needed for even longer as there are enough of them that this is possible.
After observing this community for several weeks, I have realized that my initial impression that it was a very toxic and unforgiving community to see from the outside was wrong. Not only is it very kind and civil, but it seems to be that only when something huge happens and possibly other people that are not really a part of or related to the community could come in is when it really gets toxic or unforgiving at all.
minecraft youtuber – Twitter Search / Twitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuAg17CSPG
Categories
Assignment 2
Categories
Media Practice 6
Categories
Media Practice 5
Why is Apple Music looked down on compared to other music streaming apps on the market?
My hope is to understand just what makes Apple Music so much less desirable than Spotify when, on the surface, they seem extremely similar to the point where I thought most people would be okay with using them interchangeably.
Relevancy
I believe this is a relevant object of study because this is something that I think many people wonder about but will find it hard to give a concrete and clear answer to it. I hope to find that answer through researching about it.
My relationship to this app is that I use it as my main app for streaming music as my family has the family plan and I would rather listen to music paid for by my parents than pay for Spotify myself just to listen on Spotify rather than on Apple Music as I do not have any glaring problems with Apple Music compared to Spotify as many others seem to.
Apple Music
Apple Music is important due to it simply being among the top music streaming services today.
Apple Music is unique because it has the family plan that is more desirable to some than the Spotify monthly or yearly plan.
What one would have to understand about both Apple Music and Spotify is that they are very, very similar in almost all aspects. It is very much people nitpicking and people having their preferences in my eyes that causes Spotify to be held in much higher regard. This is because at their core they both have an abundance of music for you to listen to and they both cost about the same price for their monthly subscription.
To understand why Apple music is heavily disliked in the public eye is to first look at what it offers that other competitors like Spotify do not have, and what it lacks compared to its main competitor, Spotify.
Apple Music boasts features such as offline listening, having 60 million and more songs as the library grows by the day compared to Spotify, who only has 50 million, $14.99 a month for the family plan which is only $5 more than the individual plan, and web browser listening (tunefab).
Spotify
Spotify, on the other hand, besides falling slightly behind Apple Music in its library’s size with about 50 million versus 60 million, has features such as audio features and analysis, Spotify also has the ability to be played in a web browser, a reliable recommendation system, and the ability to follow your friends and family and see what they are listening to in real time (Spotify for Developers).
Both music streaming services have what seem to be extremely similar features and a close size of selection of music as well.
To see what people had to say about what they did and did not like about Apple Music compared to other music streaming services such as Spotify, I looked to the forums on apple related to this.
The main reasons for many people choosing one over Apple Music or even switching from Apple Music to another music streaming service was usually because of smaller seeming reasons such as Apple Music not having as much detail in regards to the artists in comparison to Spotify, or that Spotify had concert support and Apple Music did not, or even something as small as the UI of Apple Music looking supposedly not as good as the UI of Spotify. These must add up in the long run as by word of mouth, asking almost anyone on the street, you are very likely to be looked at strangely for saying you prefer Apple Music to Spotify, or to even ask if the people have real reasons to prefer Spotify or any other music streaming service over Apple Music besides more trivial things such as the UI not being to their liking, although that is still a very valid complaint to have.
Conclusions
After reading through all of this, my main takeaway is that although Apple Music is lacking in a few areas due to Spotify, the main reason people seem to dislike it so heavily is due to an abundance of little things in Apple Music that they do not like, such as the way the UI of Apple Music looks compared to the UI of another music streaming service such as Spotify. Also, the fact that Apple Music’s end of year “wrapped” is much more barebones than that of Spotify’s end of year “wrapped” as Spotify is known for theirs.
Although Spotify is much more loved than Apple Music in general, I believe that it is still possible for Apple Music to coexist with it just as another option, whether that option is better or worse, however, is mostly subjective in my eyes.
Works Cited
“Features: Spotify for Developers.” Features | Spotify for Developers, https://developer.spotify.com/discover/?adlt=strict&toWww=1&redig=42891B86260A4838BBFF4353C9791BBA.
“10 Pros and Cons of Apple Music: Should You Subscribe?” Tunefab, 30 June 2020, https://www.tunefab.com/apple-music/pros-and-cons-of-apple-music.html#:~:text=Cons%20of%20Apple%20Music%20-%20What%20We%20Don%27t,competitors.%20…%203%20%233%3A%20Limitation%20with%20protected%20songs?adlt=strict&toWww=1&redig=AE7701F6879747D58A2E82B4F4472843.
Martin, Matthew. “22 Best Music Streaming Services & Sites (2022).” Guru99, 12 Nov. 2022, https://www.guru99.com/best-music-streaming-services.html#:~:text=Best%20Music%20Streaming%20Services%3A%20Top%20Picks%201%20%231%29,Soundcloud%20…%208%20%238%29%20Primephonic%20…%20More%20items?adlt=strict&toWww=1&redig=F73432DD68F24D3C834209C8E277179B.
Categories
Media Practice 2
Oppositional – when the one receiving the message understands the literal meaning but can form their own interpretations.
The ending of the anime Death Note can convey this through the use of the partially open-ended ending. The audience sees a character close their eyes and seemingly die, but in a scene a little bit after this, another character is seen on top of a building looking down and the audience has to form their own interpretations on whether the character just stands there or jumps off or anything else.
Negotiated – when the one receiving the message neither accepts nor denies the ideologies presented to them.
Any movie centered around an antagonist or antihero will likely present this. Some examples of this could be movies like Deadpool or the newest Joker movie. The movie usually humanizes the antagonist/antihero and makes the audience feel for or care to an extent for the antagonist/antihero, even if they are very much not a good person and the audience understands this.
Dominant – when the one receiving the message gets the message exactly how it was meant to be conveyed.
Pretty much any superhero movie can convey this. These tend to be the most clear as they are intended for the widest age ranges and the widest audience in general in order to reach the most people and make the most amount of money possible.
