Total Pageviews

Saturday, January 28, 2012

RS2: "Last Friday Night" i spent time with my "California Gurls" watching "E.T" and discussing the "Firework" of our "Teenage Dream"

This Blogpost is my take on "Katy Perry's Perfect Game" by Planet Money, published on January 20, 2012.

The main point of this podcast was that these days, in a world of the internet, record labels make almost no profit on their big time artists. Katy Perry is a very popular artist who has had five songs off the same album to hit number one on the charts, second only to the great Michael Jackson. If rough calculations where close to the approximate profit Perry’s album has grossed, the label should have made a forty four million dollar profit. But after all the money was properly split up to the singer, songwriters, producers, radio stations and other marketing tactics, the record label makes mere pennies compared to what the artist makes in other revenue, like her sold out tour, apparel, appearance fees, so on and so forth.
In all honestly, I really don’t think this is such a big deal. Katy Perry is the singer/songwriter/performer. Without Katy, there wouldn’t be that eight million dollars in profit the company makes, even though it’s seen as “pennies”. It’s not as if she is taking all the profit to herself, the money that the record label is investing into her is their job, and they are getting paid for it. Yes, without the label she probably would not have the fame she has, it takes a great deal of connections and investment dollars to get to where she is, but nonetheless, she is the talent, and without the talent, all you’ve got is a record label with no records to sell.
Times have changed, and unfortunately, because of the change from actual CD’s being sold at record stores to individual songs being purchased from an online vendor who takes a portion of the profit, the label loses a lot of its revenue.  In order to equal out this great loss, record labels are now locking artists into a “360 contract”, where the label is promised a certain percent of all of the artist’s earnings. I feel this is very greedy, but I guess I can’t blame the labels because they are just trying to make as much profit as anyone else would try to make in their situation.
 As for Perry, she hasn’t signed a “360 contract”, and to that I say good for her. I'm sure she's very happy with her decision.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

RS1 HOW TO BE A GENIUS

This blog post is my take on the article “How to Be a Genius” by David Dobbs. This article appeared in the September 2006 edition of the New Scientist. At first, I was very skeptical reading this. The first thought that ran through my head was “Great, another obviously gifted person telling us average people that the way to get to their level is by practicing”. I had already come to the conclusion, after a whole life time of being an average B student, that there was no way I could go any higher than that; that I had plateaued at being a B student and always will be.
But then I read the article in its entirety, and soon enough I started to doubt my previous misconceptions about my intelligence and my assumptions that intelligence was genetic, that some people were just born lucky and had all the brains. The main point of this article is that “genius” doesn’t mean that someone is born with such amazing talent. Genius is created by hard work and dedication. To get somewhere, you have to put in the extra time and effort, more so than what the general population puts in. The general population, as in me, and my B average effort.
The author claims that the two things that are more important than innate talent are a good, supportive environment and dedication. My parents were always very supportive of my studies, and were always there to help in any way they could. Granted, they both grew up in India, and learned reading, writing and arithmetic in a different way, making it more difficult for them to help, but they did the best they could with what we had. So I guess that fault goes on me, and my dedication. Now don’t get me wrong, I am a very dedicated and hardworking person. I put my all into anything that comes my way. But hard work itself is very overwhelming. If you don’t see any positives from the hard work you’re putting in, it could burn you out and discourage you. I am a little bit of both. I put my all into everything, even in the face of failure. But after a few failed attempts, my positivity will be turned into negativity and will be accompanied by discouragement.  Sometimes, the feeling or goal of wanting to do well comes with anxiety and stress of whether or not you can really achieve the grade you want. Stress can make it harder to focus on something, making it harder to complete or even begin in some cases.
This article is very well written and very eye opening. I always have such a hard time reading articles or text books because of the way they are written, but the author did such a great job of keeping the reader entertained. I was able to thoroughly enjoy it, and the message it gives.
I always thought that some people were just born smarter than others. And I had come to accept that I very obviously wasn’t one of them. I get over whelmed very easily and I stress out like I get paid to do so. But no matter how much effort I was putting into my studies, I still wasn’t excelling as much as I wanted to. I was still unhappy with my grades. I had just come to accept that this was the best that I was going to get, and I was okay with that. But after reading this article, and seeing through a different point of view, I realize that I have essentially taken the “easy way out”. Because I didn’t think I had the capability of being as smart as others, I probably didn’t push myself as hard as I could have to achieve my goal.