The impact of new technologies and the Internet on the music industry, 1997-2001

This dissertation analyses the controversial issues surrounding the rise of the onlinemusic space at the turn of the millennium.' The consumer-led online musicrevolution rode on the back of a new technology that enhanced connectivity butdisregarded notions of copyright and intellectual property. This enabled artists tocreate, promote and disseminate their own music, but also allowed end users to shareunauthorized music files, to the financial detriment of the music industry. Itexamines the major music corporations' attempts to halt what they considered to beundesirable behaviour, as well as the struggle over control of copyrights, andassesses the likely path of the development of viable online music services. Thefindings suggest that the music industry is capable of success within the onlineenvironment as long as it heeds the lessons of the consumer-driven market. Artistsand end users have been empowered by the technology, and niches have emerged fornew intermediaries to service new demands. The significance of this study is that itcontextualizes and analyses the turmoil and flux which this period experienced; itidentifies the underlying issues, and points the direction for the future of theindustry. This has been an important juncture in the history of the recording industry,and the new network technology has engendered considerable changes in therelationship between the major corporations and the public. While existing studies ofthe music industry and copyright law have informed the work, this dissertationprovides original research into how the online music space relates to and affects themajor label- dominated offline music industry, weaving together the various strandsin a multi-disciplinary approach

Investigating the build-up of precedence effect using reflection masking

The auditory processing level involved in the build‐up of precedence [Freyman et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 874–884 (1991)] has been investigated here by employing reflection masked threshold (RMT) techniques. Given that RMT techniques are generally assumed to address lower levels of the auditory signal processing, such an approach represents a bottom‐up approach to the buildup of precedence. Three conditioner configurations measuring a possible buildup of reflection suppression were compared to the baseline RMT for four reflection delays ranging from 2.5–15 ms. No buildup of reflection suppression was observed for any of the conditioner configurations. Buildup of template (decrease in RMT for two of the conditioners), on the other hand, was found to be delay dependent. For five of six listeners, with reflection delay=2.5 and 15 ms, RMT decreased relative to the baseline. For 5‐ and 10‐ms delay, no change in threshold was observed. It is concluded that the low‐level auditory processing involved in RMT is not sufficient to realize a buildup of reflection suppression. This confirms suggestions that higher level processing is involved in PE buildup. The observed enhancement of reflection detection (RMT) may contribute to active suppression at higher processing levels