The Integration Strikes Again!!!

So I know a few weeks ago I was complaining/ discussing about my COMM classes overlapping in topics-- this can be both helpful at times and quite confusing at other. In this case I happy to report a helpful overlap in topics across the board. As stated a few times before I am currently taking 5 COMM classes in one semester (4 classroom setting and 1 internship = insanity!) But I have struck the pot of gold in luck these past 2 or 3 weeks as we are discussing Radio/TV/Music and Broadcasting/Advertising in 3 of the 4 classes!! By the end of these units I should have a view on all these topics from so many different perspectives -- you may as well hand me my doctorate now lol.
But where this has come in SUPER handy is once again the mix of COMM 100 and COMM 180, in both of those classes we are closely examining the structures of the Music/Radio/TV industry, as well as talking about Advertising across all of these mediums. Even further more in BOTH of these classes we have to do online postings in discussion forums. (This is the part where it gets good, at least for the nerds) As Professor Jackson well knows, in 180 we have to both lead and participate in a class discussion online, of course I had to be the first leader in my group. For my posting I choose an article about Facebook's new integration <--- seems to be a theme going here with online-streaming music companies such as Spotify. The article was found in USA Today and explained the new partnership and how it works: basically these online-streaming companies sell subscriptions and for a flat rate usually 4.99 to 9.99 a month customers can access an extensive database of albums and tracks from various musicians, it's almost like Pandora except YOU create your own playlist. A lot of experts predict that these types of services could surpass even digital downloads, basically because you get more bang for your buck -- so to speak. However, these companies have been having trouble getting subscribers, so in a marketing effort they enabled a special feature that would stream what current subscription listeners were listening to directly into their Facebook newsfeed. They call it a "social" way to listen to music, because you could turn your friends on to certain artists (and conveniently advertise for these companies at the same time). If you would choose to click on the songs that your 'friends' were listening to you would be prompted to sign up for a free trial of the subscription service. This is both genius and quite intrusive, as the article mentioned do you really want all of Facebook to know about some of your more embarrassing music selections? And that was exactly one of my online post discussion questions. Not even 2 days after finishing the assignment, I began to work on the online post for COMM 100. The directions are slightly different, you get a choice of 3 different sites to choose from, you find an article, summarize it, and relate it to current class topics. So I browsed through the website to Billboard magazine, because after all we were learning about music and radio this past week. Scrolling along and what do I find but this lovely headline Spotify Launches 'Private' Mode in Response to Facebook Backlash !!! As if that was not a sign from a higher educational god,  it was practically an answer to my own discussion question in the NEWS. Obviously I was meant to choose this article for my posting and -- I did, the article, as the headline pretty much sums up, there was an almost instant response from users, forcing the companies to also offer a "Private Mode". I don't think that this is going to be very proactive for their original plan to draw in new users-- however it did make an interesting set of posts/blogs for me! So sorry to the streaming companies whose plan was cut short-- but big ups to me for putting all of these things together in a nice little blog post for your enjoyment! Till next time...