How much do musicians REALLY make?

Working on “Practically Famous” has been a great team effort. We want to do everything together, but things changed this week when roles needed to be clearly defined. Please allow me to introduce myself as content producer! In this role, I have been reading widely on the experiences of musicians and referring back to Jonathan’s lecture on Convergence. Convergence has had a huge impact on how we access music. We now have mp3 formats – stored on our computer, phone or ipod. No longer do we need to carry around huge walk-mans and CD players. While the digital age can be associated with convenience, I was shocked to discover that Adele, who sold her song “Rolling in the Deep” on ITunes for $1.29 only received 81 cents. Apple took 30% (40 cents). The rest went to Sony, and a further 9.1 cents was paid to her co-writer. Read here what Rolling Stone says about Adele and many others!

Original image by maury.Mccown, published under CC BY ND

Team work in its inception

The idea behind our investigative story stemmed from my passion for music. 20 years after the release of album In Utero, former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl told The Guardian in a 2013 interview that “you can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back to you for 85,000 different reasons.” No matter what genre you prefer – music is a powerful force. Everybody has been touched by a song or at least worshipped a band at some stage during their life. My group understood where I was coming from. During our first meeting, I showed the trailer for Artifact, a documentary on band Thirty Seconds to Mars and their battle with record company EMI. The implications of the digital age were tied significantly into the story. We realised just how ignorant we were to how the internet has altered music consumption. Watch the trailer below – it will get you thinking!

The Red Meat Footprint

In western industrialized countries our diets revolve around meat. But rumours abound that being vegetarian is better for the environment. Could there be some truth to it? We investigate the evidence.

Death row inmates in the United States put a lot of thought into their final meal choice. After all, it’s the last food they will eat on this Earth. And their choice is telling, for overwhelmingly they want meat. Pork chops, filet mignon, steak, hamburger, meatloaf, fried chicken, sausages…with not a lentil, slice of haloumi or vegetarian lasagne in sight. Prisoners on death row might not be the most representative of social groups, but their choices give an inkling of the central role meat plays in everyday diets.

The very earliest fossil evidence of human eating habits bears the unmistakable signs of animal consumption and our dental structure is designed for a diet that will tackle anything, whether animal or vegetable: canines and incisors for cutting and tearing, pre-molars and molars for grinding.

Today, the human diet, especially that of Westerners, revolves around meat. Livestock products provide one third of humanity’s protein intake. In Australia livestock production is a critical export industry and contributes to high domestic consumption of meat products.

How much meat do we really eat?

According to a 2005 report from Australian government research agency, the CSIRO, an average Australian eats 35 kg of beef, 21 kg of pork, 36 kg of chicken and 13 kg of lamb each year – roughly 290 g of meat per person, per day. To satisfy the meat requirements of Australians takes 16 million sheep, 8 to 9 million head of cattle, 5.6 million pigs and nearly half a billion chickens.

Why do we eat so much?

There’s a central reason we eat so much meat: it’s a great source of protein, iron, zinc, vitamin B12 and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. But there are other, perhaps less well known, facts about meat consumption. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation found that livestock are responsible for 18% of global greenhouse emissions – more than transport. Feeding and watering livestock accounts for over 8% of global human water use. Of the total combined weight of land-based animals, livestock makes up 20% and livestock displace native species and cause significant erosion problems.

Why is meat popular in Australia?

Meat is popular in Australia thanks to our agriculture industry, which provides relatively cheap product, our pastoral history and our culinary culture, which celebrate traditions like the barbeque and the meat pie. The red meat industry alone is worth $15 billion annually, meat production is increasing and we’re eating more meat than ever before.

Original image by Boobook48 under CC BY ND

While beef consumption might be very slightly down and lamb consumption well down from the 1960s, these days we are eating two to four times more pork and chicken per person. But how many of us have dared take a close look at what impact our diet might have on our environment, and how we could reduce our red meat footprint?

Adapted from Bianca Nogrady’s original article published in Cosmos on 1 September 2011.

Graphic Converter to Photoshop: The transition

As a Graphic Converter user on my mac, I was familiar with some of the options in the toolbox of Adobe Photoshop CS6. I’m quite simplistic in my graphic design and even though I sought to learn new tricks on Photoshop, I decided to stick to the aesthetic style that I create on Graphic Converter. Using an image of three little children in Vietnam, I decided to adjust the colouring of the photo. In the right hand section of the working space, there is a “color” option, which is located next to “swatches”. In “adjustments” I chose the colour balance option. The “cyan” section of colouring was appealing to me, so I moved the bar to the left side at about -36. A light green colour was achieved and created a slight contrast with the yellow colouring of the original photo.

In addition to colouring, I incorporated some text into the image. An obvious choice was the subject matter associated with the photo – “Vietnam”, hence why I chose to write this word twice in two different font sizes and colouring. This is a technique I have picked up from my viewing of other graphics in the past, appealing to my simple aesthetic style. Check it out! 

Jimmy Page VS Robert Plant

To me, this feels like a case of Superman VS Batman. Two heroes up against each other. Both well loved and highly respected. That is exactly how Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are perceived in the music industry. Heroes. It is no coincidence that their unauthorised biography was entitled “Hammer of the Gods”. I certainly hope that the pair’s disagreements don’t become a threat to the Page-Plant dynamic that I so love. Click here to find out more.