for sampling on the Internet. This is not just a substitute for CDs or audio-
tapes. The cheap distribution -- at different levels of quality -- makes it pos-
sible to sample music in a different way. This in turn expands the market for
music, as more can be tried without the commitment to purchase.

/tab\/tab\_Film_/tab\/tab\

A similar change has happened with film. As I suggested at the start of
this book, the costs of production of film have dropped dramatically as digi-
tal equipment has become more powerful and less expensive. We are soon
to enter a time when filmmakers will be able to produce high-quality film
for digital devices at 1 percent of the cost of the same production with tradi-
tional tools. Apple Computer is fueling this demand, with cheap, high-
quality digital film technologies bundled into its popular iMac computer.
This same technology, costing a few thousand dollars today, would have
cost $150,000 just five years ago.

This drop in the cost of production is due to changes in the physical layer
that enables film production. It is also supported at the code layer by a wide
range of tools for manipulating and editing digital images. These together
create an important blurring of the line between amateur and professional.
As a recent Apple ad put it, "And now you're the purveyor of, you're the gen-
erator of, you're the author of _great_stuff._"

How great, of course, is a matter of taste. In 2001, Apple proudly adver-
tised the first iMac movie purchased by HBO -- a short dealing with teenage
pregnancy, produced by a fourteen-year-old kid.[8-6] This is not quite Holly-
wood in the den, but it points to a future that just ten years ago could not
have been imagined -- a broad range of film content produced by a wider
range of creators and, in turn, potentially available to others.[8-7]

/tab\/tab\_Lyric_Servers_and_Culture_Databases_/tab\/tab\

Popular culture is diverse and expansive. Finding information about
this culture, however, is often quite difficult. Fans may be many, but the
systematic cataloging of data about such creativity has, so far, been quite
lacking.

Think in particular about music lyrics. Music is an important part of our
life. We grow up listening to songs on the radio; we buy records and listen to
those songs over and over. Our ability to recall music is extraordinary; a few

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