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Showing posts from December, 2010

Why Theodore W. Adorno would follow Chris Anderson on Twitter (essay)

Introduction At first glance, the reader may wonder what Theodore W. Adorno and Chris Anderson have in common and what that has to do with researching the music industry. On the one hand, a sophisticated German philosopher; a critical theorist of the 20th century; a member of the renowned Frankfurt School and a follower of Karl Marx’s thoughts on capitalism and society. On the other, Chris Anderson, a child of the digital economy, a blog writer, a journalist, a business entrepreneur and, according to The Time 100 , one of the most influential thinkers of the new millennium. Both were (respectively are) critically reflecting the media landscape of their time. In this paper I use the ideas of both thinkers and demonstrate the Mediamorphosis in the wake of technological innovations at the example of the music industry. On the one hand a centralized media system dominated by large media conglomerates, on the other side a democratic media system driven by prosumers. Thes two contrasting m