ABSTRACT
A Revolution in Media Content & Delivery So, just what is this new media thing, anyway? For those in their twenties, New media is more than just a familiar term! It’s most likely the only kind of media that the majority of those in this demographic consume. For those more “old skool” folks, however, the term has often evoked looks of bewilderment over the last few years. If you are a voiceover artist or other media professional involved in the field, it’s time you got a handle on the brave new world of new media if you’re not already familiar with it, as new media is already pervasive, and is definitely where all media is heading. A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW MEDIA The term new media refers primarily to newer forms of media content, which, beginning early in the new millennium, were originally being created by alternative and renegade content creators. Falling under the new media genre now is a rapidly growing new breed of alternative content being produced by mainstream media outlets as well, including repurposed versions of the content that appears on traditional media channels. New media is an outgrowth of a more functional Internet which, during the first decade of new century, came to be known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 utilizes the latest technologies along with high-speed broadband Internet connections to offer content in new formats and genres not previously available via traditional media delivery channels or even on the Internet before high-speed connections became widespread. The best examples of early new media content were, at first, online audio “podcasts” (so named back in 2004 as a hybrid term combing the name of the hugely popular Apple iPod® name with the word broadcast). Originally referred to as “audio blogs,” podcasts had a relatively humble debut, but then exploded in 2005. The number of podcasts online increased exponentially over several years, with hundreds of thousands of podcasts available by 2007. Differentiating podcasts from traditional media was that podcasts were played on media players installed on computers and on small portable media players that became available in the late '90s. Podcasts were commonly encoded into the MP3 file format that became popular for music, since this format significantly shrunk the file size of an audio track. Podcasts were, at first, created and voiced by amateur hobbyists or “wanna-be” performers. They were downloaded directly off the Internet and stored in computers or in portable media players, where they were available to play whenever the listener desired. A technology called “RSS” (real simple syndication), originally developed for text blogs, was modified for audio blogs and allowed people to “subscribe” to podcasts and automatically download each new episode of a podcast series as it was posted online, in the same way that a DVR records new episodes of television shows.
