Thursday, 4 February 2016

Addictive App Called Chomp Gets You to Laugh at Your Own Face


Addictive App Called Chomp Gets You to Laugh at Your Own Face

 

Christoph Niemann wants to show me something funny.
Open the app and go to the fish-face scene, he tells me over the phone from his studio in Berlin. Niemann, an illustrator who regularly contributes to publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times, and WIRED, is guiding me through Chomp ($3.99), an app he’s created with his developer partner Jon Huang.
I click on a tile with a hand-drawn fish, and live video of my face, captured by my phone’s front-facing camera, appears on screen—only it’s upside down, positioned within the outline of a chubby, bug-eyed guppy. I study the screen for a moment, unsure of what I’m seeing. Then I get it. When positioned just right, my mouth becomes the fish’s mouth, and this fish—a hybrid of me and Niemann’s illustration—is mirroring every word I say.


chomp
Chomp
Niemann’s right: The effect is funny, for all the same reasons looking at someone’s face upside down or adding googly-eyes to a celebrity on a magazine cover is funny. It’s silly, bizarre, and unexpected. It’s enough to make you giggle out loud.
Niemann illustrated 51 scenes for Chomp, each as charmingly absurd as the guppy. In one scene, your face replaces a piece of toast in a toaster. In another, it becomes a ping pong ball. My favorite shows my visage slowly dripping from a leaky faucet, only to become a messy deluge of facial features when I tap the screen.
Chomp is a fitting sequel to Niemann’s first app, Petting Zoo, in which you interact with a menagerie of animal illustrations by tapping, swiping, and pulling on them. (In one doodle, swiping upward on trotting weiner dog pulls his midsection into an accordion-like fold; in another, your swipes control a blast of air, letting you mess with the mane of a thoroughly unamused lion.) Chomp’s control scheme is even simpler: just tap the illustration to elicit a response. Tap it repeatedly to trigger a series of unexpected animations. “There’s always this thin line between what you want and what actually happens, and in a way you want your expectations to be messed with,” Niemann says. “And I think that’s most important with humor.”
You might have gathered that Chomp is a little … unusual. It’s filled with dualities: It’s not quite a storybook, and not quite a video game. It’s ostensibly for kids, but its creative appeal is universal. It’s definitely digital, but feels analog. The app lives at the intersection of all these things, which is one reason it’s such fun to play.


Chomp2
Christoph Niemann
But with Chomp, as with Petting Zoo, the most salient feature is interactivity. “The one thing that I think everyone dreams of, from four-years-old onward, is this idea that you draw something, and if  you touch the drawing, it comes alive,” Niemann says. Chomp adds a layer of whimsy by making your face the focal point. The app inserts its users into the narrative by streaming a video feed from the phone’s camera. This feed (typically of your face, though nothing stops you from turning the camera on someone or something else) can also be animated—moving, pinching, and stretching in response to the animation that appears on screen.
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Christoph Niemann
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Christoph Niemann
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Christoph Niemann
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Christoph Niemann
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Christoph Niemann
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Christoph Niemann

Seeing yourself as a half-illustrated, half-photographic image is a brilliant take on the avatar, which has grown almost boring in its quest for realism. “I somehow feel that a lot of people in tech are not really drawn to this idea of abstraction,” he says, adding that there are notable exceptions with Ustwo’s Monument Valley and Google Doodles. “And many people who really love drawing and abstraction are not often drawn to tech.” Chomp playfully moves between abstraction and realism in a way that few apps attempt to do.
The app also leverages society’s obsession with selfies by allowing users to take video or snap a photo of themselves in strange, animated scenarios. This feature, too, reflects Chomp’s proactive ethos. The app isn’t a passive experience in which you watch a character embark on an impersonal journey; it’s you, sort of, who stars in the story. Chomp encourages user to treat the illustrations as a backdrop for their own creativity.


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Christoph Niemann
Of course, you’re going to look ridiculous playing with Chomp—it’s hard not to, when your face appears on a dinosaur. But that’s the point. Even after spending three years on the app, Niemann still finds himself amused by it. “I never laugh at my own jokes,” he says. “But there are some scenes for Chomp that actually still make me giggle.”

 

 

 

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Wednesday, 3 February 2016

While You Were Offline: Twitter’s Got More Beef Than a Steakhouse

While You Were Offline: Twitter’s Got More Beef Than a Steakhouse

 

If there’s been a common theme to this week’s shenanigans on the Internet, it’s been that people are at war with each other. And not just the regular kind of “Internet people are jerks to each other because it’s the Internet” kind of war, either; this was a week where surprise beefs just kept appearing out of nowhere, each one more surreal than the last. Was something in retrograde? Something must have been in retrograde. Here, then, are the tiffs and verbal dustups behind the last seven days on this, our wild World Wide Web.

Time Earth is a Flat Circle

What Happened: It’s the interspectacular rap battle you’ve been waiting for, as B.o.B. faces off against Neil deGrasse Tyson after making claims that the Earth is, in actuality, really flat.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media think pieces
What Really Happened: The week got off to an unexpected start when rapper B.o.B. started sharing his theories about the shape of the Earth on Twitter:
His tweets prompted much concern and hilarity amongst Twitter followers, as well as both explanations and defenses from the media. However, one media figure just couldn’t stand by while science was being debased. The same media figure who can never stand by when anyone—or anything, including fictionalized narratives in worlds with alternate laws of physics—takes science anything other than 100 percent literally: Neil deGrasse Tyson.
B.o.B. wasn’t convinced (in a tweet since deleted, he responded, “Why can’t the curvature of the earth be measured anywhere in nature? why does only NASA have photos of the curve? r u a mason?”), but he did take that line about Neil enjoying his music to heart… and dropped a track—also since deleted—where he not only dissed NGT, he also cited Holocaust denier David Irving.
The whole thing was amazing, with lyrics like “Aye, Neil Tyson need to loosen up his vest/They’ll probably write that man one hell of a check” and “I see only good things on the horizon/That’s probably why the horizon is always rising/Indoctrinated in a cult called science/And graduated to a club full of liars,” although the surprise highlight (OK, lowlight) was likely, “Stalin was way worse than Hitler/That’s why the POTUS gotta wear a Kipper.” The track was called “Flat Line,” after the chorus, which went, “Flat line flat line/You fooled us for the last time/Flat line flat line/There’s no superior blood line.”
As if this wasn’t getting surreal enough, deGrasse Tyson then responded with his own track. Well, almost:
The track in question comes from his nephew, and includes the lyric, “Very important that I clear this up/You say that Neil’s vest is what he needs to loosen up?/The ignorance you’re spinning helps to keep people enslaved, I mean mentally.” Recognizing game, B.o.B. de-escalated things:
So, while the lame stream media played up the conflict between the two, it’s just like Madonna once so poignantly sang: music makes the people come together.
The Takeaway: But, uh, you guys do all know that the Earth isn’t actually flat, right? I mean, sure, Neil deGrasse Tyson can be offputtingly pedantic and all, but he’s not actually wrong here…

Kanye Distracts The Internet’s Entire Creative Process

What Happened: A simple misunderstanding broke the Internet. But, in everyone’s defense, the misunderstanding was Kanye West’s.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces
What Really Happened: As we pointed out Wednesday, Kanye West went off on Wiz Khalifa on Twitter midweek over what turned out to be a misunderstanding, and … well, to be honest, he pretty much brought the Internet to a halt in the process.
For those who missed the original kerfuffle, the short version of what happened was that Wiz tweeted this:
…which Kanye took as a reference to his wife Kim Kardashian, and responded—well, we were going to say appropriately, but the thing that made everyone sit up and take notice was how impressively oversize the reaction was. (Most of the tweets are gone, but you can read them here.) Especially considering that Wiz wasn’t actually talking about Kardashian:
But, you know, it’s easy to see why Kanye would’ve made the mistake; it’s not like Wiz had previously made a track called “KK” about the damn thing.
Oh. Never mind.
Anyway, in retrospect, what’s amazing about Ye’s rant isn’t the rant itself, but everything that followed, as the Internet tried to come to terms with what had happened. As parts of the rant became immediate memes and BuzzFeed quiz fodder, the Internet sought to place what had just happened into context. Was Kanye thinking deeply about the big subjects? Perhaps Vox could explain things to readers who had no idea what was going on. Or maybe The Week, for an even less likely to understand audience.
The (non-)fight made headlines everywhere as if no one could really understand what just happened.
Thankfully social media was here to help.
Oh, and why did Kanye delete the tweets?  
Well, that’s one potential reason, but many people think it’s because Amber Rose—Kanye and Wiz’s mutual ex, and someone who was collateral damage in West’s deleted rant—got involved by posting this:
That was posted before the tweets were deleted. And then, after the tweets were deleted, she posted this:
As #buttstuff started trending on Twitter as a result (no, really), West felt the need to clarify that, no, of course he’s not into that:
If there’s one highlight to come from this whole thing—besides the phrase “you have distracted from my creative process,” of course—it might be this last exchange. Kanye, you’re looking mighty nervous over there.
The Takeaway: There are so many takeaways! Kanye is quick to rush to hilarious self-righteousness? The Internet equally quick to jump on it because it’s Kanye? The seeming ease with which Kanye can come up with perfect meme material? But really, Mr. West probably just wants us to focus on the two most important things: that Waves, his new album, is coming out soon and that he definitely isn’t into anal play whatsoever, no sir, why would you ever say such a thing?

This Week’s No, Really, What The Hell? Moment

What Happened: As if deGrasse Tyson/B.o.B. wasn’t strange enough, this week saw a second entirely unexpected beef, as Ghostface Killah and Martin Shkreli have gone to war. With unintentionally hilarious results.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs
What Really Happened: This one is just nuts. Remember supervillain-in-training Martin Shkreli, the guy who hiked prices on a life-saving drug and was then arrested by the FBI on charges of securities fraud? And remember that he bought the sole copy of that Wu-Tang Clan album?
Well, it turns out that the Clan’s Ghostface Killah isn’t too happy about any of that, according to an interview he gave TMZ. “That shithead bought it, you know what I mean?” he said, referring to Shkreli. “You don’t take some AIDS pill that you have for seven dollars, and make it like eight hundred dollars. You don’t do that, I don’t care if you bought the Wu-Tang whatever.”
While many—some would say, the majority—would agree, the real world Lex Luthor wannabe wasn’t amused:
Well, OK; that’s actually a pretty good burn. But it turns out, Ghostface wasn’t going to take that lying down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT_3o4-9WPw Oh, shit. You don’t insult a man’s Michael Jackson nose and not expect a response, right? Shkreli was so upset that his response had its own Twitter teaser.  
While that tweet might have seemed like someone going “Yeah? Yeah? I’m gonna have a great comeback, you just wait!” and then running away crying, it turned out that Shkreli’s response was well worth waiting for:
Amazing, right? It raises so many questions: Who are those random dudes behind Shkreli? Why is he pretending to be a gangster? Given that no one else will ever hear the Wu-Tang album, in what way is removing the Ghostface verses a threat at all? Has this man ever left his house? As you might expect, the Internet had to respond:
Of course, the video immediately went viral, because how could it not? It’s not every day that a disgraced CEO who is under federal investigation threatens a rapper via a video in which he is surrounded by, let’s be honest, actors or bodyguards dressed in hoodies and masks to disguise their blushes. This is something that deserved to be seen by all. Oh, yeah; and after TMZ tweeted that Shkreli was the “absolute worst,” he called in to TMZ Live just to say that he wasn’t threatening Ghostface, really, and by the way, he deserves respect and he’ll defeat the legal charges against him. How is this man even real? The Takeaway: Take it away, Twitter:  

Twitterosum Lessononia!

What Happened: Next up in this parade of social media war: the woman who wrote Harry Potter taking on a member of the British Parliament. No, really.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media think pieces
What Really Happened: Natalie McGarry is a British Parliament member who can’t seem to avoid controversy. She came to Parliament last May as part of the Scottish National Party’s massive sweep to power (The party won 56 of 59 seats in Scotland), only to become embroiled in a scandal over disappearing donations. Suspended from the SNP, she became an independent MP, and then this week, got into a fight on Twitter with J.K. Rowling that may see her sued for defamation of character. (You have to wonder what her constituents feel about her performance, don’t you?)
What led to this dramatic tweet from Rowling—
—was a six hour fight on Twitter between the author and the MP, over whether or not Rowling supported, in McGarry’s words, “a misogynist Twitter troll.” It all started here:  
The conversation, which is now impossible to share thanks to McGarry having deleted tweets and locked her account, centered around the accusation that Rowling had positive interactions with a pseudonymous account  that takes delight in baiting, trolling and outright insulting Scottish nationalists—something that was actually true, because said account had donated money to Rowling’s charity, Lumos. After much back and forth where Rowling asked for proof that she had defending trolling as a practice, McGarry sent a tweet seemingly backing down. “On reflection, I do apologize for any misguided inference that you support misogyny or abuse instead of the folk you tweet,” it read. And then a McGarry supporter stepped in to defend the MP:  
McGarry herself soon shared that image as proof, and seemingly recanted her apology. The only problem was the tweets weren’t related at all, as Rowling pointed out:
After McGarry argued that Rowling’s interactions with the abusive account implied support for all of its tweets, Rowling responded:


Now that’s g-r-r-ea—too obvious? Okay, I won’t go there, then.
The Takeaway: Has anyone checked in on the Energizer Bunny lately? We’re suddenly very worried.

 

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Muzik’s Tweeting Headphones Are the Future of Audio

Muzik’s Tweeting Headphones Are the Future of Audio

 

Can something be part of the “Internet of Things” without its own connection? Muzik’s convertible wireless headphones make a convincing argument that it can. They don’t act like your run-of-the-mill Bluetooth headphones. Using your iPhone or Android device as a conduit, you can share tunes to Twitter and Facebook by tapping a divot on the right earcup.
Muzik’s smart, social headphones, the first of their kind, do much more than that, though. They use Shazam-like audio recognition to know what song you’re listening to. That leads to a pair of unique tricks: These cans recite the name of the song playing when you tap another earcup divot—a feature that worked all but once during my test runs. Second, if you’re listening on Pandora—a service that doesn’t offer links to full songs—Muzik’s headphones recognize the song, find it on Spotify or elsewhere, and share the link to Twitter or Facebook. There’s no extra action needed; simply tapping the “share” divot does the job. You get a spoken confirmation that your song’s being tweeted (“Sharing… Shared on Twitter”).
You program the four divots on the right earcup using Muzik’s app for iOS and Android. The options are limited: You can program the buttons to share to Twitter, share to Facebook, state the current time, identify the current song is, speed-dial someone in your contact list, or create and share a “Twitter Moment.” The latter grabs your location, matches it up to an image from Google Maps, stamps it with the date, time, and temperature, then posts that image with a link to the song you’re listening to on Twitter. Accompanied by some #branding, of course:
Customizing each button is dead-simple with the app. You just tap the button you want to program and pick a pre-set function from a list. Muzik also plans to release an SDK so developers can add their own functions.
Maybe you think those features are gimmicky—and they are, a little, but there is something cool about sharing music without touching your phone. The headphones use your phone to send Tweets, but the experience feels like they’re performing the magic by themselves. With their combination of phone-free navigation and app-based controls, the closest thing to these Muzik cans is probably Parrot’s Zik headphones. After all, both products offer the ability to navigate tracks and adjust volume with a swipe of the earcups. But while both make it easier to jam out without having to look at your phone—the promise of a screen-free future—their target audiences are very different. Muzik’s focus is on social sharing while Zik’s is on deep and customizable sound settings. That makes Parrot’s headphones a much better fit for audiophiles.
Which is where the trouble comes in. The audio quality coming out of Muzik’s headphones doesn’t match the cool tech—especially at this price. They don’t sound bad. It’s just that they can’t touch the sound quality of great options for the same price or less, such as the Aiaiai TMA-2s, Sony MDR-1As, and Sennheiser Momentums. The low-end and mid-range are punchy, but muddy. Listening to anything acoustic or delicate isn’t a great experience, as there’s a lack of warmth and clarity. The whole package is too expensive ($300) and meh sounding to be a smash hit. But there are bits of technological brilliance mixed in, some of which make sense as standard features in a world of increasingly connected cans. In fact, Muzik’s biggest problems have nothing to do with the headphones; it’s the lack of a go-to social network built for sharing and listening to your friends’ music.


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Muzik
Twitter might be the closest thing to a quick-and-dirty music-sharing service, which is why it makes sense that Twitter is among Muzik’s main investors. (Spotify would like to be considered a social music hub, but it’s not a great experience in that respect.) There have been attempts to create a bona fide “Instagram for Music”—Cymbal and Undrtone have tried, but neither boasts the user base (or features) to make them go-to apps. Integration with a music-minded service—one that makes it easy to share, archive, and spin radio stations based on your friend’s tastes—would make these cans more compelling. It’s just that the ideal service for these headphones doesn’t really exist yet. Maybe Twitter will build it?
The build quality of the Muzik convertibles is solid, with weighty metal housings for the drivers and a metal headband that rocks a stylish half-twist where it meets the cups. At the crown of your head, the headband is sheathed in squishy, airy rubber, keeping it comfy on your bald spot. The headphones fold inward for storage and transportation, and there’s a soft carrying case included in the box.
The “convertible” refers to a couple of things. First and foremost, you can use them over-ear or on-ear, thanks to two pairs of included earpads. The pads snap on magnetically and are fairly comfy; I went with the over-ear setup for my hands-on tests. They’re also “convertible” in the sense that you can use them as wireless Bluetooth cans or wired with the removable 3.5mm jack. Mind you, you can’t use all the fancy smart-and-connected features unless they’re in Bluetooth mode, but it’s still great to have the unpowered hardwired option in case you run out of juice.
Even with the lack of an ideal music-service match, Muzik’s sharing and song-identifying features show where the future of personal audio is headed. Beats looks primed to follow suit, too: Apple is rumored to be ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack for a Lightning connector, a move that would greatly enhance the input/output capabilities of any headphones plugged into an iOS device. So soon enough, you may find similar features in regular wired headphones, and it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of new things developers will add to Muzik’s bag of tricks—or what features manufacturers might try to mimic in higher-end cans.

 

 

 

 

 

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DNA Got a Kid Kicked Out of School—And It’ll Happen Again

DNA Got a Kid Kicked Out of School—And It’ll Happen Again

 

A few weeks into sixth grade, Colman Chadam had to leave school because of his DNA.
The situation, odd as it may sound, played out like this. Colman has genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, and kids with the inherited lung disease can’t be near each other because they’re vulnerable to contagious infections. Two siblings with cystic fibrosis also attended Colman’s middle school in Palo Alto, California in 2012. So Colman was out, even though he didn’t actually have the disease, according to a lawsuit that his parents filed against the school district. The allegation? Genetic discrimination.
Yes, genetic discrimination. Get used to those two words together, because they’re likely to become a lot more common. With DNA tests now cheap and readily available, the number of people getting tests has gone way up—along with the potential for discrimination based on the results. When Colman’s school tried to transfer him based on his genetic status, the lawsuit alleges, the district violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and Colman’s First Amendment right to privacy. “This is the test case,” says the Chadam’s lawyer, Stephen Jaffe.
When Colman was born in 2000, DNA analysis of newborns was still rare. But he had a congenital heart problem that led to extra tests. That, in turn, led doctors to discover that he carried some genetic markers associated with cystic fibrosis. His markers are no guarantee of a disease though, and Colman never developed any cystic fibrosis. Still, his parents disclosed the information when filling out a medical form to enroll Colman in school.
That information made its way to teachers, who allegedly told the parents of the two other students with cystic fibrosis during a parent-teacher conference. Those parents allegedly demanded the Chadams remove their son from school. Eventually the the school district allowed Colman to return after missing a couple weeks.
The Chadams have since moved away from Palo Alto—but the wheels of the legal system are still turning. When the family first sued the school district in 2013, a district court dismissed the case. The Chadams appeal the dismissal to the federal Ninth Circuit court in January. The Departments of Justice and Education have also written a brief in support of the Chadam’s case, which suggests the federal government has taken an interest in the case and its outcome.

A Railroad Company and Carpal Tunnel

To experts in genetics law, four letters are conspicuously missing from the legal wrangling: GINA, or the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. GINA bars genetic discrimination in just two cases: employment or health insurance. That obviously doesn’t include getting education and housing and plenty of other situation where discrimination might happen. “This case is an useful reminder about the limitations of the federal statute,” says Jennifer Wagner, a lawyer and contributing editor to Genomics Law Report. That’s why the Chadam’s case does not rest on GINA but the ADA, where its application to genetic discrimination is untested.
There is, however, a one example of how the ADA and genetic information intersect. Back in 2001—before GINA passed—the railroad company Burlington Northern Santa Fe was looking for genetic markers for carpal tunnel syndrome in its workers who filed for worker’s comp. (The workers claimed their carpal tunnel syndrome came from operating BNSF machinery; the company was clearly looking for another excuse.)
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit on behalf of the workers, and they eventually reached a settlement in 2002. The workers got $2.2 million—but because the suit ended in a settlement rather than a court decision, it did not establish a legal precedent for the ADA covering discrimination based on genes. The outcome in Chadam’s case could, if a trial goes forward, spell out exactly who gets to access genetic information and what decisions can be made based on it.
In the fifteen years since Colman got a DNA test as a baby, tests have only gotten cheaper and more popular. You have 23andMe’s $199 spit test, of course, but also the National Institutes of Health pumping $25 million into baby sequencing studies. “As we do more screening earlier and earlier in life, there’s potential for misuse of information in ways that are harmful, that could potentially discourage parents from seeking genetic testing even if it’s medically indicated,” says Michelle Lewis, a pediatrician, attorney, and research scholar at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. The genetic discrimination future is here.

 

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Programmer Sample Job Description(What does this mean?)




  Programmer Sample Job Description(What does this mean?)

This programmer sample job description can assist in your creating a job application that will attract job candidates who are qualified for the job. Feel free to revise this job description to meet your specific job duties and job requirements.

Programmer Job Responsibilities:

Creates and modifies computer programs by converting project requirements into code.

Programmer Sample Job Description Programmer Job Duties:

  • Confirms project requirements by reviewing program objective, input data, and output requirements with analyst, supervisor, and client.
  • Arranges project requirements in programming sequence by analyzing requirements; preparing a work flow chart and diagram using knowledge of computer capabilities, subject matter, programming language, and logic.
  • Encodes project requirements by converting work flow information into computer language.
  • Programs the computer by entering coded information.
  • Confirms program operation by conducting tests; modifying program sequence and/or codes.
  • Prepares reference for users by writing operating instructions.
  • Maintains historical records by documenting program development and revisions.
  • Maintains client confidence and protects operations by keeping information confidential.
  • Ensures operation of equipment by following manufacturer's instructions; troubleshooting malfunctions; calling for repairs; evaluating new equipment and techniques.
  • Maintains professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops; reviewing professional publications; establishing personal networks; participating in professional societies.
  • Contributes to team effort by accomplishing related results as needed.

Programmer Skills and Qualifications:

General Programming Skills, Analyzing Information , Problem Solving, Software Algorithm Design, Software Performance Tuning, Attention to Detail, Software Design, Software Debugging, Software Development Fundamentals, Software Documentation, Software Testing.
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Listening to music in China is a rich person’s luxury

Listening to music in China is a rich person’s luxury

 

China’s Communist government may frown upon certain riffs and rhythms, but the country’s citizens are—on the whole—ardent music lovers. More than 977 million people, or 72% of the population, listen to music every week, according to a comprehensive new report by global media analytics company Nielsen that looked at the country’s streaming, purchasing, device usage, and live event attendance habits.
For comparison, that figure is 85% in the UK and 91% in the US. It could be argued that music listening in China is just as popular as it is in those two countries: despite having more limited resources, consumer spending on music as a share of total entertainment spending is higher in China than it is in the US, according to Nielsen.
But the report, which separates China’s population into three income tiers, also highlights an intriguing divide.
The country’s music-listening audience is markedly broken up by wealth. China’s most affluent consumers are the heaviest music listeners, while interest in music peters out in the lowest socioeconomic tier. Those in the top income tier (defined as individuals with an average income of US $33,000) listen to about 19 hours of music per week, while middle-class listeners (average income $19,000) take in 16 hours, and music-listeners in the lowest tier (average income $9,000) tune in for 12 hours. It’s not necessarily an issue of access—pirated content in the country is rampant and therefore readily available—but more likely one of disparate income, responsibility, and free time.
Unsurprisingly, spending habits are pronounced among the income groups, with the top tier shelling out about $139 per year on music and the lowest tier spending only $18. The top tier also is the most likely to listen to English-language music, tune into chart-topping pop songs, attend live events, and spend money on streaming services.
Nielsen’s first-ever Chinese music study notes there is “enormous potential” in China in general for music distributors. Music spending is expected to reach $56 trillion over the next decade, with growth driven “by young, affluent, connected consumers with disposable incomes.”
Western music companies looking to China for growth—in particular, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music—will just have to note that non-affluent Chinese customers aren’t likely to jump on board anytime soon. With China’s wealthy class expected to almost double and drive most consumption over the next five years anyway, according to Boston Consulting Group, it wouldn’t necessarily be an immediate concern.

 

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