Capitalism and Society: New Media

The most recent product in the music industry, Spotify, is helping to change our society. Spotify is not just a great leisure innovation, it is one that gives the consumer a feeling of liberation. It seems to be the case that the tides are turning among those who control the markets. For years, they have had the technological edge that has allowed them to exploit the general public and create a consumer machine. With the development of the internet and high speed broadband connections, new technologies have been deployed among the general public.

Inspiring a social change, YouTube first led the way by making programmes and music available across the globe freely. Following YouTube, Spotify created an application out of this philosophy. At the advent of this new media, corporations tried to fight back by removing videos from YouTube. More recently, catch up services have been rolled out across the major television broadcasters, and Channel 4 has this month announced it will make all programmes available on YouTube in full.

It is interesting that this is the case because it is not just about a new style of media, but about a social change too. Society has been bombarded with the tricks of capitalism so much that it has learnt to mobilise itself against corporations. How much longer will society be controlled by corporations? There is a feeling that people are starting to take something back- perhaps this is the dawn of a new relationship between society and corporations. The creators of Spotify and YouTube have realised that they can make digital media freely available to all by allowing companies to advertise on their sites and applications.

In some respects therefore, it is valid to say that society has embraced capitalism, and equally capitalism has embraced society. Perhaps people have started to realise that to improve our society, we can't go on subscribing to capitalism as it is. People must form a new relationship with it, and this doesn't just have to stop with media. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the future as we could be about to witness the basis of our economy change.