‘Youtubers’ to catch young audience

Atresmedia and Mediaset, the two most powerful companies in Spanish private television, try to approach to the ‘millennials’ through online video platforms

Mediaset communication group launched last week Mtmad, a video platform for videos exclusive for internet and formats and content specifically targeted to young audiences. This idea is not new at all: tomorrow will be a year since Atresmedia launched Flooxer, a service with very similar characteristics that also aims to draw the attention of Millennials.

Flooxer platform

It’s no coincidence that both Spanish audiovisual groups have resorted to the Internet to arouse the interest of the audience of people under 30 years. These viewers are the ones that tend to follow YouTubers who distribute their content via the network, and instead consume less television than the older population. A study by the consulting firm Barlovento Comunicación concluded that between January and October just a 63.4% of Spaniards between 21 and 36 years had seen the TV, which represents 10 points less than the total population, and, moreover, the average daily consumption, which is 227 minutes overall, among Millennials stands at 157, and reaches 140 minutes in any age group between 21 and 26 years.

Mediaset

"We want to reach more people, and we feel that extending the offer can also reach people who until now did not consume our content," explains the multiplatform director of Mediaset, Ana Bueno. However, she says that the group already has "a lot of young people," both through TV channels or Mitele platform, which one until now offered the contents that were broadcast by conventional channels and since the birth of Mtmad has also incorporated specific formats produced by the network. "What we are doing is to expand the catalog of videos you have on the internet. We want our digital offering nourish not only television but also open up new types of content”, says Bueno.

Mtmad

Mtmad currently includes about forty different formats on topics such as fashion, cinema, travel, beauty, sex or video games, and often include advertising as a branded content, i.e. content directly linked to a brand. YouTubers as Aless Gibaja, Ruben Errebeene or Sara Ramirez offer their videos through this platform, but Mediaset also wants to use his new window to publicize some of the faces of their usual TV channels to a new audience. For example, one of the stylists of a Mediaset program, Cámbiame (Change me), Pelayo Diaz, has his own video blog with all kinds of advice. In the same wat, the TV presenter Tania Llasera show you how is her day to day from home in pajamas and no makeup and two stars of the reality Gipsy Kings reveal their tricks of makeup. "Many of the talents who work with us are authentic influencers. Now they can work with formats that are very different from television and reach other audiences” reflects Bueno.

Mtmad platforform

With the same aim of spreading television content of the group to an audience more used to internet videos, Mtmad also created the videoblog Que no salga de aquí (Do not tell this to anyone), through the one journalist Mireya Marrón demonstrates how to prepare Mediaset programs and what happens behind the scenes during the broadcast.

The director of platform Mediaset does not rule out that, over time, some of the formats born in Mtmad can finish making the leap to television grill, but stresses that this "is not the goal of the platform."

The origin of ‘Paquita Salas’

This path of the web to the TV is the one that followed the TV series Paquita Salas, born in Flooxer and, due its success, brought to the Atresmedia TV. even it was only possible to watch in TV the first episode.

Paquita Salas' opening

Unlike Mtmad, the video portal for Atresmedia offers -along with the videoblogs of creators like Mister Jägger, Vengamonjas or JPelirrojo- fictional works produced specifically for this platform. You can also find some fragments of programs of Antena 3 and La Sexta as El Intermedio or El Hormiguero, although the content manager platform, Emilio Sánchez Zaballos, said that among its objectives there is not the aim to derive new viewers to the channels of the Atresmedia group. “This is not a line of strategy, but if this ends winning the loyalty of the people, then it’s welcome," he said.

According to him, Flooxer was born because there are "new young viewers who want different content, new artists who only had exposure through YouTube and new demands of advertisers who want to reach this audience." A year later, Sánchez Zaballos is "very satisfied" with how the site is working, especially the "quality content" and because they have achieved "a high level of acceptance among users and creators."

"Ice Bucket Challenge" or how to use New Medias

Nowadays our world is in constant changing trying to adapt to the new technologies and to all the possibilities that they contribute. Things have changed; now it is not necessary go to a kiosk to buy the newspaper, all the information is in Internet; buy whatever thing from the desk of your house it's possible; even you can prepare a trip without going to a agency travel. Within this possibilities contributed by Internet it's necessary speak about the viralization capacity of the contents. With a simple click you can share some content with your community in the social networks. This quality of the Internet is being used by ONGs to spread their contents and to reach more audience.

It is very easy find a lot of solidarity campaigns in Internet. All the time people is sharing some texts, videos, photos or asking for a firm in a petition. The web site https://www.change.org/is one of the most popular sites in the World Wide Web thank to all the people who enter to sign a petition or to create a petition. There you can find requests for a government, request to save some animal which is in danger or to collect money for an illness. However, the most successful solidarity campaigns are those that involve citizens. Here we have the case of "Ice Bucket Challenge", a campaign that started in 2014 and circled the world.

"Ice Bucket Challenge" campaign was started the 7th august 2014 by Pete Frates family, that meet two hundred people in Copley square of Boston. The objective was collect money to investigate ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) an illness that affects Pete Frates (https://petefrates.com ). This progressive degenerative disease is very strange and only affects one person out of ten thousand. Campaign was presented as a challenge; people had to throw a bucket of cold water over them. The objective was to fell stiffening of muscles like the patients of ALS. People had to rec the challenge and to posted in Facebook or Instagram. Then they had to mention other people to do it and donate money to the ONG.

People of all parts of the World contributed to the cause recording their videos and donating money. Only in 2014, the ALS Association (http://www.alsa.org/) collected $115 million. Why this campaign has so success? All people who recorded a video and posted it in Facebook donated money? People really wanted to help to collect money or simply they wanted to create their own virtual identity? These are some of the questions with which we find when we study this case.

There are several factors that can help us to understand the success of "Ice Bucket Challenge". The main explication alludes to the viral character of Internet. The creators of the campaign saw that viral marketing could function very well with their objective. Viral marketing allows the message to be transmitted to a group of people who, because of certain factors, will be in charge of disseminating the information that has been offered to them. This is very far away from mass marketing, where an advertiser throws a message to the whole audience. In the viral marketing, the advertiser, in this case the ONG, achieve that people internalize the message and transmit it as your own. That is why people put more effort in communication with other people. Also, it is known as "Word of Mouth Marketing", because it works when one person tell to another something about the campaign and so on.

Once we speak about WOM and viralness communication, it is the moment to mention the "Sneezers". This term, coined by Godin, refers to all the people who "sneeze" all information they have above other people, infecting them with the message. But how these "sneezer" have knowledge about campaign? The answer to this question is another of factors that helped to success of campaign. Lazarsfeld, one of the most important researchers in the communication world, talked in 1995 about the "opinion leadership"; this is when one person has authority in a media and a lot of people want to know his opinion about different topics to build your own opinion. "Ice Bucket Challenge" used famous actors, politicians, youtubers or instagramers to reach to the people. All of them are opinion leaders and when its followers saw that they did the "Ice Bucket Challenge", they decide to do the same. 

It is possible to find one more factor that influenced the campaign. Characteristics of the message are very important for their transmission. People not share all content that find in Internet, but it has to have some attributes. Within the different viral messages that it is possible to find in the net, stand out those who entertain and are original, those who invite the interaction of the audience and those who transmit a positive message. "Ice Bucket Challenge" campaign shared all of this attributes.

It is true that lot of people contributed to collect money for ALS, but not all was good in this campaign. "Ice Bucket Challenge" served to show, one more time, the existence of "click activism". That type of activism, if we can call it that, consist in think that someone help to some cause only sharing information with a click. People want to appear altruistic, worried about the world and willful to combat injustices; but they only share some post in Facebook or sign in an electronic petition. This is related with the objective of build a digital personality, different from what they are actually. These people did not donate money, they just wanted the rest of the world seen how altruistic they are.

Solidarity campaigns are triumphing nowadays in Internet, and every single week we heard about a new challenge or a new original and surprising video to protest or to reclaim more rights, money for investigation or more equality. With all the tools that we have to share them is our duty to extend message against injustice and help people. But we have to remember that make a click to post something in Facebook is not the only thing that we can do or we'll be fooling ourselves.

How the soul of music is slowly dying: About the digitalization of music industry

Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Soundcloud, YouTube - the list of music streaming providers is constantly increasing. Today’s kids know exactly where they can listen to their favorite music. The times where every single vinyl was a lucky discovery in the record shop are clearly over. In the beginning of the Internet age, music industry was still fighting against serious problems with piracy.  Everyone who grew up during those times has been walking around with a taken-for-grantedness when it comes to refusing to pay for music. Now with streaming gaining the upper hand, illegal downloading seems to be off the table. But is this new financing model enough to live up to past times?

The digital age and its technical achievements are giving us the background music we were missing in our lives for such a long time. The musical accompaniment of our emotional state, no matter where, no matter when, seems to function with the simple inserting of little, in plastic encased membranes deep down into our ears. Only one more click to open the right app and the unbelievable amount of more than 35 million songs is provided to the music enthusiast.

It has not always been like that. If you try to think back a couple of years, you will probably remember the one guy in your clique who digitally recorded every imaginable track that you needed for your iPod or for the next party on a 500 gigabyte harddrive. Not only him, but everyone knew that he did not spend a penny for a single of those mp3-tracks. I mean, who is even paying for music? After all, music is everywhere to be found on the Internet and if you want to get it for free, you can get it for free. The “generation for free” agreed silently with the hushed up, but consciously perceived illegal Internet platforms (as well as with not paying for news on the Internet). The Internet seems to have opened the Pandora’s box of music industry.

People who think ahead see many financial losses at the end of this non-existing value chain that need to be regulated somehow. A first and careful attempt to come closer the consumer, who doesn’t want to pay for musical art, is the act of streaming - with affordable prices, a relentlessly growing mass of music and with a development towards a completely non-existing valuing of music itself. The musically always updated consumer is thanking for this offer and at the same time kicking the artists with 7.99 € per month right in the back. Without any guilty conscience, because why should you have one? The legality of music consumption seems to suppress the morality of those minimal costs. Nevertheless, the industry prefers a minor contribution to the costs over watching the pirates downloading illegally or the lawyers suing those pirates furthermore. The artist is recognizing this development first, then accepting it and then slowly burying all his dreams of a “Golden Record” according to music recording sales certification.

Music video blocked by GEMA

Groundbreaking concerning the payment of artists whose videos have been uploaded on YouTube has been the agreement between YouTube and GEMA (Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights) in Germany in the beginning of November 2016. Since 2009, many YouTube music videos from major label artists as well as videos with background music have not been accessible for German users, because GEMA wanted YouTube to pay a fee for video views of GEMA-protected artists (70.000 in Germany plus several foreign rightholders). YouTube on the other hand refused to pay the required amount for the copyrights, saying that the person who uploads a video should pay for it and not the platform. Many negotiations for a new agreement and several law suits later, they came to an agreement - YouTube pays money to the GEMA and users can finally enjoy limitless music again. Other YouTube-competitors like Spotify have come to an agreement with GEMA too.

It's all about the money, money, money

The future of music streaming is benefiting from the disadvantages of downloading. With its iTunes store, Apple revolutionized the market for digital music and afforded the user to cram his harddrive just like before, but without having a bad conscience about it. In the end, the result is basically the same: a flood of music files, in which you found by accident - after inserting the USB cable of the harddrive into the computer - a once purchased classic record again. MP3-downloading on the other hand is gathering dust. Who doesn’t believe that should ask himself, which songs he bought digitally during the last years. The list will be difficult to count. The revived vinyl-lover will probably laugh about all of this. But if you pay 12 € for a vinyl instead of 1.49 € per song, you sense music not only haptically, you are also way more aware of it. The slow monetizing of a model for the (social) musical center seems to fill in the gap suitably. The harddrive has been relocated into the cloud, the price structure has been adjusted and the consumer is happy again.

Music straight out of the cloud

The words of the real music-enthusiasts criticizing all the “shuffle-players” and “track-skippers” are still legit. People who are walking through the city listening to shuffle-mode, skipping the first song after three seconds, then the next one and again and again until they are thinking “oh yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly the song I wanted to listen to, what a coincidence I found it in this great shuffle-mode”, they are probably having a different understanding of music than people who still go to vinyl shops and rummage in huge CD shelves. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad thing, but the awareness of music as an art form is getting lost.

Music on demand, just out of the pocket

What Spotify once started seems to function for the market. Increasing sales figures of the vinyl industry (30% in 2015) are harming the streaming industry probably just as little as the cinema harmed the theatre. The entertainment is comparable, but the audience is different. People who love haptic and collect vinyls or even CDs are surely having a bigger understanding for the higher prices, but besides that, they are maybe also using the advantages of the mobile music market in their pockets, with its outrageously cheap, but market-conform prices and which they can use wherever and whenever they like to. Sooner or later, streaming will indeed be mainstreaming. 

"You're famous because we hate you"

In the last few years cyber-bullying became an up-to-date topic for many people. Especially teenagers are involved in online abusing as well as scientists are interested in this online phenomenon. Now youtube-star Rebecca Black shows: being an online-victim can make you successful and famous.

What is cyber-bullying?

Cyber-bullying is the use of social-networks, cell-phones, e-mails or chat-rooms to abuse, tease and threaten another person or another group of people. There are a lot of cases where classmates wrote abuses in online forums or putting an intimate or exposing video online. Usually the reason why teenagers are doing that are: fun, cultural conflicts, demonstrating power, acceptance in one group or because they fear to be the victim. Especially in new media there is no way to escape for bullied victims. If someone abuses a person online in a blog or social network it will be a public information and the victim cannot just go home and hide.

Rebecca Black: victim, but famous

The past showed us that we had a victim who got hurt and an offender who was the one who abused someone. Everything was clear before some internet-stars appeared. One of them emerged a few weeks ago. Rebecca Black is not the classical victim of online-bullying because she benefits of the people who hate her. More than 53 million clicks in six weeks for the song “Friday” and more than 700000 comments for her youtube-video. Most of the comments make fun of the people who appear in the video, the lyrics as well as of the pop-song which seems to be too primitive and crappy for most of the youtube users. One user just posted on youtube: “WTF was that shit I almost threw my iPod away to stop the madness she needs to stop singing and jump off a cliff.“

The 13 year old online-star is confused and got hurt of all the bad comments and reactions of her song as well as for her music-video. Anyway she has the attention of all the American TV-Stations and her song entered in the iTunes charts on position 46. She is successful and does not stop to put more stuff of her online. So another version of the song appeared on youtube where she is performing her song live with her friends in a living room. It is us who give people like Rebecca attention and make her successful even when we do not like her. One iYoozy-user posted a comment which makes the situation very clear: ”We don´t hate you because you're famous. You're famous because we hate you.”

Use of New Media

It is not new that new media can be used as a platform to put your own stuff online and become famous, but in the past users expected positive reactions for their stuff they were putting on youtube, myspace, etc.. It seems that we now reached a point were we just can use new media to get attention in a positive or a negative way. It will not make any difference if you want to become famous. All artists who spend a lot of time and work hard to write and record songs feel treated unfair. Why do people want to listen and watch crappy songs and videos and do not prefer listening to a song with good lyrics? The song “Friday” is just a representative example where some users and media will go in future and so far the top of all the crappy output of online users.

It might be not seen as cyber-bullying in the eyes of the offenders because they never met Rebecca personally and do not go to school with her also. Youtube users rate the song like they rate any other funny stuff in which are no people involved, but this time there is one human being who is abused and most of the people do not realize that fact. There is a difference between the classical online-bullying and the case of Rebecca. Most of the comments are not personal and the people who rate and abuse her are far away from her. Anyway telling Rebecca anonymous and far away that she should jump of a cliff because it is not bearable to listen to her voice is cyber-bullying.

New role of the victim

Even if it was not Rebecca`s aim to obtain all the hate of the youtube-users, in future there might be much more people who want to be famous at any price. Cyber-bullying now gives you the ability to get the attention of lots of people and can make you famous. The role of the victim has changed in some cases. Now we can put crappy stuff online on purpose and wait for how shitty the users rate or how many bad reactions we get for a video or a song. The classical role of the victim does not disappear, but the victim has the ability to use the abuses in a positive way. The online-victim is able to become a star. Anyway the victim is still a victim who has to fear psychological problems and might need the help of other people. The offender remains constant and does not realize that his power to abuse is used in a positive way.

There are a lot of people who think that Rebecca was not cyber-bullied. These people should ask themselves how they would feel after putting a video online and reading thousands of bad comments. You might be famous and you might feel good giving interviews to well known TV-stations, but when you leave the house of your family it will always remain that there are 53 million people who saw your video and the majority of them hates you. Success does not make cyber-bullying go away.

Sources:

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/musik/0,1518,752176,00.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

http://www.thecampussocialite.com/wp-content/uploads/rebecca-black-plague.jpg

http://images2.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/6647717/Is-friday-I-hate-you-bicht.jpg?imageSize=Medium&generatorName=Rebecca-Black-Meme