Shannon's HIST 390 Blog

Targeting is when you take a simple product that everyone likes and subdivide it in a way so that you can appeal to those who are more nit-picky about what they like. An example would be Cheerios. The cereal started out as a simple ceareal that has no real taste to it and as of now, you can find Cheerios flavored with honey, chocolate, frosting, etc. By creating more flavors of the cereal, the company was able to widen their pool of customers. While widening the customer pool, it also narrows down the demographics of people who like regular Cheerios more versus people who like chocolate Cheerios.

Amazon.com is a great example of marketing based on a person’s likes and dislikes. The website uses the data of what you buy compared to other people that buy it and uses that data for recommendations on products you might like to buy. You may order two books and based off the type of books you order and the people who have also order those books, they are able to make recommendations of books that you may also be interested in.

Watermelon Man is an example of a song where the music and beat of the song is so catchy that later on, artsits are taking that beat and making their own songs with it. This shows how music travels through history and how history changes it. A piece of music or a simple beat can travel through decades and a variey of genres.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was created to regulate the use of the frequencies for radio broadcasting. Many people want to create their own radio channel but there are not enough frequencies for everyone to have their own channel. The numbers run from 550 KHZ to 1600 KHZ. The FCC has set it up so that people must apply for a frequency, pay for it and they will be given a license for the ownership of that frequency. This is the best way to regulate radio so that two people aren’t competing to be heard on one frequency.

Sampling has been a part of the growth of music decades. It helps artists bring back music they grew up with and putting their own spin on it. Most artists do use small parts of older songs and recreate them but it is common for artists to also create songs that don’t even try and change the music to make it more unique. This caused copyright problems where many artists would sue the other artist for thousands of dollars.

Our discussion during class today made me realize that when my teachers say don’t use Wikipedia cause it is all wrong, they are actually wrong. Yes, random people are able to edit information on Wikipedia but on most pages, there are people that know the actual facts and will go and change the false information. In my experience, Wikipedia has actually helped me find information I needed when I couldn’t find it on any other academic based cite. Wikipedia can be very useful to students, they just have to know how to see what information is real and what is false.

Over the past few centuries, many letters, photos and artifacts from the Civil War have been recovered. After close analysis of some of the items recover, people have become skeptical of what really happened and why. For example, a photo that is stated to be black Confederate soildiers has been in fact proven to be a picture of black Union soldiers. The photo was doctored to make it seem like slaves were fighting with the Confederates. Another example would be a letter sent to President Jackson from New York governor Martin van Buren. If you read the letter carefully, you can tell it is fake. You can find words that were not commonly written in texts during that time period. This makes the reader believe that there could have been a hidden message written within the letter. If there was a hidden message, then what was it?

During the early 20th century, many were migrating to big cities such as Washington DC. During that time, new forms of music were also being created and traveled throughout the area. African American cultures created “Go Go” music while white americans created Dinah, which can be compared to minstrel music.

Another thing that was changing in music was the intergration of bands. An example would be Jimmie Rodgers’ and Louis Armstrong’s “blue yodel no. 2”. Even though it was looked down upon during that time, they still colaborated and created a great song. King Records was also known for intergrating the workplace. You can find pictures of white and colored people working together in the office.

I was kind of suprised when it was mentioned in class that early country was mostly about working class things and fracturing of families. It’s quite different to typical country songs in the current generation, which are mostly either love/breakup ballads or songs about getting drunk and doing sterotypical country things.

I don’t think it’s wrong that it was easy to imitate a country song on GarageBand. Being a fan of country music, I know that ‘t a lot of the music is very repetitive and honestly sounds the same to those who don’t listen to it constantly.

Watching and listening to the Carolina Chocolate Drops was quite interesting. The music sounded like the were only using instruments but they actually were just using a violin and their hands. Its cool how adding in claps or smacking your legs/chest can change the whole sound of the song.

The WWW has changed drastically in the past decade. We went from only being able to use the internet on bulky computers that were slow and only able to get certain websites to being able to have access to the internet on computers, tablets, smartphones and smart watches. The WWW has given us easier access to the answers to any question you could think of at your fingertips.

The cool thing about Thesus the mouse is that it was able to use Boolean algebra to find its way through a maze, then was able to memorize the path it went and could perform it over and over again until the maze was altered.  Even after the maze was changed, it was still able to form a new path and was still able to retain parts from the old path.