http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/03/21/youtube.awards.ap/index.html

This news article is mainly on reporting videos that won awards from YouTube, which allows its users to nominate 6 videos for each of its 12 award categories. These categories are music, sports, comedy, instructional, short film, inspirational, commentary, creative, politics, series, eyewitness and “adorable.” The awards have allowed unknown artists such as Tay Zonday to have his song, Chocolate Rain, to be booked on National TV shows, and many others to gain fame and fortune. To many people, the YouTube awards are like the new Emmys.

This article is related to Network which is discussed in class. Before the YouTube era, unknown artists such as Tay Zonday, have limited medium to publish their work to the world. In fact, their only medium is through record companies such as EMI or Sony BMG. That puts them in a weak position for gaining profit from their work. The record company has to like their work first and then people or consumers have to decide whether or not the particular artist is any good. If both the company and people love their work, artists are still at a weak position to gain profit since the record company that puts out their work has monopoly over the artist’s work, and the artist has only one tie to one record company which has multiple ties with multiple successful artists and ties to the public. If the record company decides to cut off this particular artist, this artist won’t make any profit. Things are different when YouTube is invented. Artists are able to publish their work without record companies. If people like what the artist has to offer, the artist would gain popularity and multiple record companies would compete to sign this particular artist. That gives the artist multiple ties to multiple records that have the same amount of ties to general population, which in turn gives the artist more power to negotiate for more profit since if one record decides to break tie with this artist by not signing a deal with him, the artist will have other alternatives.