5 Levels of Production/Distribution

Last class period was the first time I have ever heard of these 5 levels. I always saw a producer as someone who actually held the title of producer, but really a producer is anyone involved in creating the media text. The rights owners are easy to understand, they are simply the people who "own" the intellectual property. Content aggregators pull different kinds of content for specific groups of people. Distributors send the information to consumers. And hardware producers create the actual devices used to gather the media text. In class, my group put this concept to use by breaking down the process of producing a song. We chose the country song called Chicken Fried. Some of the producers we found were the Zac Brown Band, the song writer Zac Brown, the band manager, sound engineers, studio operators, and more. We were not sure, but we believed the rights owners were Atlantic Records. Some content aggregators would be country TV and radio stations like GAC, CMT, WQMX, and WGAR. A few distributors are Time Warner, iTunes, local cable stations, and any store that sells music. Finally, the hardware producers are anyone who makes TVs, radios, computers, CDs, CD players, iPods, ect. I never realized everything and everyone involved in producing a single media text.