RS7 Gangnam Style & Katy Perry

Zoey Chase and Robert Smith had two different podcast within a several days of each other. The first talked about a hit Korean pop song, “Gangnam Style”, and the now world famous singer Psy. The second podcast is about Katy Perry’s success last year and how it didn't really translate to her making the money that most people would assume she would.

Korea has been waiting for this moment for a long time where a pop song of theirs makes noise all around the world. America has been known forever as a huge export of pop music because no matter where you go in the world most likely you will hear American pop music being played. This is the first time that a Korean pop music song has been competing as a top pop song across the world. Psy’s song “Gangnam Style” is a huge step for Korea in becoming a name in pop music. They are going to look to continue the progress they had made so far in music to continue to dish out hits to the world. They use YouTube as a way to get their music viral to everyone and once one person watches it and likes it, they then share that song to all of their friends and then this goes on and on. I personally think that it is good thing for Korea to have put out their first successful song. Not only will people in Korea be happy but if this continues but people in America will be happy to listen to international music more if they continue to pour out hits.

Katy Perry had huge success last year and was one of the most popular artist of the year but does her success actually mean she made a lot of money. Most people would think so but for the most fact Katy Perry didn't even break even. Katy Perry sold 2 million albums and 24 million songs downloaded on iTunes but all of her overhead cost and everything else that needed to be paid made this happen. Even five of her songs were eon top of the charts last year and she had a movie about her life. I personally think that the music industry is going downhill with all of the illegal downloading of music and such. There is no way people will continue to buy music if there is a free way it can be obtained. It is going to kill these popular artists because they won’t get nearly half of the money they would have if there was no way to illegally download music.

RS6 An Economist Gets Stoned

The podcast talks about the money side of marijuana, both if it was legalized and if it stays illegal. They start off by talking about how in California there is about 1000 medical marijuana distributors and some of them might be getting shut down because of obvious reasons that are the same as if it should be legal or not. People start off to talk about how if it was legalized it will be cheaper because people won’t need to smuggle it in and pay for all the necessities of smuggling drugs. If it really is cheaper a lot more people will use the drug as well. The counter argument to that is if marijuana is legal it will get taxed and thins such as transportation cost and distribution cost will have to be paid for. The podcast goes on to talk saying it’s overestimated the amount of money marijuana will bring the government.

I first off want to say that I believe that marijuana should be legal in all states because of the economic growth it can bring. I also believe that they are underestimating the amount of money it will bring in. If it was ever legalized over all the states I would say that more than fifty percent of the population would do it on a regular basis. Marijuana would become a little more expensive but not that much more because right now there is a predetermined price of marijuana and if it was legalized they wouldn't really drop the prices because they know they can sell it for that much and people will buy it. It will also help provide jobs for people because growers, transporters, distributor’s workers and many more positions would open up. Marijuana would help money flow around the economic system as well because of how people feel when they get high and get hungry. Things to smoke out of will be sold at more places and possibly different designs and more job availability. I believe cigarettes are worse for people with more predetermined bad side effects then marijuana which has really non beside maybe being a little lazy or sluggish. Once they legalized alcohol again they made so much money from the taxes and organized crime went down. That could be the same if weed was legalized.

RS5 Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson says that creativity should be held on the same level as education and is just as essential. He makes this argument at a TED Conference and goes on about how it shouldn't be that education is held on a higher level than creativity and it shouldn't be. One of Ken Robinson’s main points was that people grow out of creativity and are born being creative they just grow out of it because it is not important to people in society. He also says that no one is original anymore because they don’t want to be “wrong”; being creative with things such as art you can’t be wrong but because creativity is not important to people it makes everyone similar.

I completely agree with Sir Ken Robinson because throughout life art and classes such as that are important in early development of kids for a reason and as time goes on it is almost just forgotten in a sense. Art majors are hard to come by and people who like to draw and are also good at it. We need more types of people who are creative because these are the types of people who really think differently than someone who stops art classes and their interest in drawing at a younger age. It is also because once you get past a certain age people choose majors and interests that will make them money and most of the time people who are creative and are majoring in art have a hard time getting jobs in today’s society. That is why it’s hard to come by people who are really interested in drawing and being creative still because of the importance people see education and that’s not how it should be.