Here in the UK, the election campaign has switched to economic matters. So that means a wave of abstract figures, jargonization and economic word-salad from the main three political parties.
This infographic for the Guardian datablog visualizes measures suggested by the parties to plug the enormous black hole in the UK’s finances. That deficit currently totals £167bn ($255bn) – more than the £152 bn ($237bn) the UK government earns from income tax every year.
See the graphic
Explore more detail, data and sources here: http://bit.ly/dotheycutit
Recently, the UK government passed The Digital Economy Act which included many, perhaps draconian, measures to combat online music piracy (including withdrawing broadband access for persistent pirates).
Much was proclaimed about how these new laws would protect musicians and artists revenue and livelihoods.
But how much money do musicians really get paid in this new digital marketplace?
This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. (Thanks to Neilon for pointing that out). I’ve taken his calculations and added a few more.
As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of. Some are even secret. Last.Fm’s royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension. (If you can explain it to me, please get in touch)
Note: these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs). The full spreadsheet of data does though. You can see all the numbers and sources here:http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty
If you have any experiences, data or royalty statements to share, please post below!
Recent controversy about the budget of the BBC here in the UK made me curious about its spending. Here’s the BBC-o-Gram, a visualization I created for the Guardian Datablog, exploring the costs of running one of the biggest broadcasters in the world.
See the visual. Explore the data.
Do they provide good value?
New York-based designer Mike Deal has a great project going visualizing The Beatles.
I especially like this one. It tracks the keys of Beatles’ album tracks. You can see at a glance their poppier, more harmonic albums.
The project is an offshoot of an ongoing kaleidoscopic project at chartingthebeatles.com and on Flickr.
If it grabs you, head on over and take part. See you there!
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The Billion Dollar-o-Gram 2009
The Billion Dollar-O-Gram 2009. The latest version of our fabled treemap of billion dollar amounts.
All the data and more billion dollar amounts: http://bit.ly/bndollar
A little context
This image arose out of frustration with media reporting of billion dollar amounts. That is, that they’re meaningless without context. But they’re continually reported as self-evident facts. 500 billion for this war. 50 billion for this pipeline. Literally mind-boggling amounts of money.
So here we’ve scraped reported figures from The New York Times, The Guardian, and other news outlets and visualized them as a treemap (?). So you can see in one place figures that would otherwise be scattered across multiple news reports.
(**Sorry it’s taken me so long to update this image from the original version. I’ve revised and updated all the figures. Sourced some new numbers. And researched new ideas suggested by visitors. Thanks all!**)
Research: David McCandless, Matthew Sawh, Caroline Flyn, James Key
Sources: NYTimes, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC and other media reports.
Data: http://bit.ly/bndollar
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