After reading the first chapter of Manovich’s The Language of New Media, I am not fully convinced by all of Manovich’s arguments. One argument I have a particularly hard time agreeing with is his argument of the variability of new media. Manovich believes new media to be “something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (36). Manovich believes this variability to be made possible by the modular nature of new media. My as new media has grown to be a larger part in my life my experiences have led me to believe otherwise.

When a user purchases a song on an online music store such as iTunes, the user receives the exact version of the song that the artist records. The different tracks (i.e. bass, drums, vocals) do not arrive in a modular fashion. The song that the user receives has been assembled by the artist in the exact way they want their song to be heard. With the advent of “legal” music downloads, there has been an increase in the security of new media. For example, it is very hard to alter a song downloaded from iTunes. The media files are locked so it is nearly impossible to import them into other editing applications. Apple often brags about the user friendliness and cross compatibility of their applications but their iTunes music store encoded audio files are nearly impossible to import and use as the soundtrack of the film you are making on iMovie. Recently, some record labels have allowed iTunes to sell their songs in an unlocked media format but the majority of songs still are delivered in a locked format.

It is also difficult for a user to have a unique media experience when viewing copyrighted video on the internet. Many of today’s primetime TV shows are made available online on their networks’ websites. Although this is certainly a different format than the television, usually users are not permitted to save the video on their hard drive or sometimes you are not permitted to even seek to a different time in the show. The overall experience turns out to be almost exactly the same as watching a show on a television but instead the television is embedded into a webpage. Much like the songs bought on the music store, television shows and movies bought on the iTunes music store are also difficult to customize. The format of the downloaded video can usually only be played in QuickTime and it is very difficult to export in a different size or quality. It is also particularly difficult to use iTunes purchased media in your own websites. Due to the copyrighted nature of iTunes media, Manovich’s theory of variability doesn’t quite hold true.

The massive amounts of legal red tape surrounding the copyright laws of digital music make Manovich’s vision of a uniquely customized media experience for individual users seem nearly impossible. As more and more media forms become available on the computer, I fear that the original creators of the media will become reluctant to distribute their media in a form where it can easily be altered. When an artist creates something, they often distribute it in the form that they see as the best one. In order for Manovich’s vision of variability to play out, digital media is going to have to adopt a universal unlocked format.