Is Social Media Fanning The Flames of Democracy In North Africa?

You may have seen in the news overnight that the popular protests in Tunisia seem to have spilled over to Egypt with an unprecedented number of people taking to the streets of Cairo to protest against the Government.  The Los Angeles Times article (click on link embedded in title of this post) mentions that 80,000 people signed up on Facebook to attend the protest.  The Egyptian government has blocked access to Twitter in an attempt to prevent further organisation and communication - a move that echoes that taken by the Iranian government previously.

Big Four Reach For The Sky

Sony have announced the latest attempt to combat illegal downloading - Music Unlimited.  The UK version launched just before Christmas and it is now being made available across Europe and later in the US.  The service allows users to access music by Sony artists, and those signed to the other big four including EMI, which is stored using Cloud technology.  This means that once you are signed up to the service - which costs a fee (the basic costing £3.99) you can access the music on a variety of devices, from PS3s to mobile phones.  It offers the user the benifits of personalisation and mobility and, what many may see as, affordability. It will be a a rival to serives like Spotify, which also streams music.  It's another example of the big music groups trying to do things in-house, allowing them to have more control over the supply chain, reduce cost and increase profits. 

Read the article from the Guardian (click on the link embedded in the title) and ask yourself how this announcement offers further examples of the synergies created by Sony Music being part of a conglomerate.