Slashdot Mirror
Google Launches Free, Legal Music Downloads in China
Wired is reporting that Google has a launched a new music download service in China to better compete with the leading search company there, Baidu.com. Offering some 350,000 songs, a number set to rise to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.1 million in the coming months, the library includes both Chinese and foreign artists signed by Sony Music, EMI, and Universal Music. Proponents of the new service are also hoping it will combat illegal music downloads simply by offering higher quality songs for download. There are no immediate plans to expand this service beyond China.
hummm that does seem a somewhat...DIFFERENT business model...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Sounds like a perfect way for the US to download high quality music with nothing more than a simple proxy.
Someone have a link to this so I can start the downloading?
Or do I need a Chinese proxy first?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I am surprised they are not blocking or at least filtering this out like they have done to YouTube and other sites on the Internet.
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
So let me get this straight -- massive piracy leads to free, legal downloads? I'm going to start installing p2p clients on every computer I'm asked to fix!
If they're hoping this will stop Chinese piracy, they are crazy. Offering higher quality music with a price will only cause the pirates to up their quality, which will trickle down and benefit Chinese downloaders and purchasers of cheap MP3 CDs from Siberia to South Africa.
So, the key is to pirate songs so much that the labels have no choice but to offer legal, high quality downloads for free. Ok. Not what I expected but I'm willing to do my part...
So, let me get this straight. In order to stop the ever-growing black market of illegal music downloading and distribution, Google chooses to open up shop for free?
So, if I start a massive wave of downloading pirated Microsoft software, when do I get my free copy of Office?
The Chili Peppers had it right all along I guess...
1. Give music away for free 2. ?? 3. ???
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
I would assume that Google is paying a small price for every download. From the sound of things they might recover a small portion of their costs in ad revenue, but the real goal is to offer a compelling service to capture more of the massive Chinese advertising market.
Chinese Internet users now make up something like half of all internet users, and Google is currently losing to Baidu in that market. Thats a HUGE market to be losing in. So even if Google sees a net loss on offering music downloads, if they can become to Chinese internet users what they are to internet users in the rest of the world they just nearly doubled their ad viewers. Sure, an ad view in China is probably worth a little less, but with billions of viewers it hardly matters.
1. Generate a random mashup of various pots and pans being dropped down a flight of stairs.
2. Sell them through Google.
3. In China*
4. Profit!
* Note: Model only valid in China.
Try selling FLACs? Hell, if I'm paying for music, it better damned be loseless.
1. Everything's "legal" in China, right?
2. If it's on the Internet in China, it's probably on the Internet everywhere else, right?
3. And the labels are going along with this...why?
stuff |
The US starts trying to use Google as a VOA (Voice of America) megaphone, then then Chinese ban ALL songs not provided with 100% faithful lyrics sheets, so as to screen out pseudo-anti-Chinese-Government songs, or songs that over-sell the greatness of the USA. Songs like "Born in the USA" will likely get binned (but, for all i know it is available for years...). I imagine Prince's (the artist formerly known as Prince, formerly known NOT as Prince, then formerly now formally known as Prince) "Erotic City" (We can FUCK until the dawn, making love til cherry's gone...) will be binned, unless not yet censored.
Yeh, i can just see Google getting paid (and bending over for the money) the USA VOA machine, cuz, business is business. I hope "do no wrong" applies to not pumping a megaphonic pathway into another country's borders. Locals should HUNT for, not be blasted BY content they don't want nor don't need.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Companies like Amazon and Apple have found ways to monetize music downloads in the USA where we have huge organizations devoted to protecting copyrighted music by threatening with lawsuits that nobody can afford to be involved with. For the other 75% of the world that does not live in such a court-happy western country, however piracy rules the day.
They are trying to sell the one thing that is easier to rip off than anything man has ever produced before to a nation virtually built on ripping things off. Yeah that's going to work really well.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Most people will never be able to tell the difference in quality between this and the typical mp3. For the average person, the only difference is that it would be downloaded from a different server. It seems to me to be easier to mandate advertising in all P2P software. But then, no one would use it for fear of adware/spyware. From what I read here, it's all about "advertising" which has NOTHING to do with downloading anything. The question i have is...How is this any more legal than using bearshare? LMFAO! Nothing changes. The downloader still pays nothing. What's the point in all of this? Unless using this gets your computer infected.
'"Born in the USA" will likely get binned...'
Have you listened to the lyrics?
Like, REALLY listened to the lyrics?
I'm not just talking Republican National Convention playing the chorus over and over. Seriously. Born in the USA is not a shining example of feel-good patriotism. It's an ironic intervention against an America that's forgotten its defenders.
Well, since the huge China is the only country besides maybe little Canada that is actually solvent, it makes sense to launch this service there.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Google's music download service in China:
http://g.cn/music
and their very cool music screener
http://www.google.cn/music/songscreener
Bruce Springsteen's 'Born In The USA' Lyrics:
Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just covering up
[chorus:]
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man
[chorus]
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"
[chorus]
I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go
I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
I always hear it like "Porn in the USA" .
Slipping shoelaces ?
Exactly! As a matter of fact, put all your CDs, DVDs, and other copyrighted material on-line for free and advertise it. That's the best way to break the system.
Stick it to the man!
Heh, while your idea has some merit, we've still got to be careful, here in the Land of the Not-So-Free and the Home of the McLawsuit.
Famous last words in any large-crowd revolt against Da Man: "They can't possibly arrest ALL of us!"
the library includes both Chinese and foreign artists
But ... but ... but Chinese artists ARE foreign!!
List of free online public proxies located in china, listed by latency:
http://www.xroxy.com/proxylist.php?port=&type=&ssl=&country=CN&latency=1000&reliability=9000&sort=latency#table
"Easy listening songs" from google: here.
Note that the characters "äè½½" mean download, and if slashdot murders that for you, it's the link in the penultimate column in the table. Going down the left hand side of the page are words that correspond to different genres. In order, from the top, they are:
- New (release) music
- Chinese music
- European/American music
- Japanese music
- Pop music
- Rock music
- Hip-hop music
- Soundtrack music
- 'Ethnic' music (though presumably not the "Free tibet" rap...)
- Latin music
- R&B music
- Country music
- Folk music
- Soul music
- Easy-listening music
- "JnB" music
Enjoy!
My UID is prime. Is yours?
So what's the difference?
The hurricane?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is off topic, but I have a little experiment for anyone who wants to give it a try. 1. goto baidu.com 2. search for anything or click on the page 3. Does it work? 4. go back to baidu.com 5. now search for falun gong 6. Did it work? 7. If not try going back to baidu.com, make sure you reference the page and don't just click back I did this and after I searched falun gong I seem to have been temporarily blocked from using the webpage. My connection seems to be getting interrupted.
How is allowing users to download for free able to compete with free pirated versions? Maybe it's not free, but it doesn't state how much (if anything) it costs for this service...
I pay $5 for a pill, they pay the same company .10 for the same pill.
I pay $15 for a CD (well actually not directly for 8 years), they pay nothing.
I pay $50k for a college education, they come here to the same school and get massively subsidized.
It really seems like the world economy exists to pump the wealth out of my environment.
While I don't pay $15 for a CD, others pay that and so they have to charge prices for their products and labors that will cover that.
I keep telling myself it will even out at some point- but then they get laws passed that say they can sell a product in another country for $1 and it is illegal to import/resale that product in my country for $1.10 instead of the $15 I pay.
It is anti-capitalist. I could handle my wages going down 10% a year if the prices I pay for goods were going down at the same rate.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
...deep-linking to the songs on Google's servers? It'd be upsetting for Google if they setup all the infrastructure, eat all the costs, and Baidu reaps the rewards by linking to the self-same content.
What hidden DRM will there be. I'm thinking a lot.
It's an ironic intervention against an America that's forgotten its defenders.
Yes. It's similar in vein to lots of other songs that have been misunderstood:
My blog
It's amazing at what google is doing now days. I guess I'm really inspired by Google because I am a software engineer that finds how they go about their business very unique. I wrote an article on my blog about why you should use Google. The blog is focused on helping people who are new to computers/internet and want to learn to use them more efficiently. Check out the article about why you should use google at http://onlineinnovation.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-you-should-use-google.html If you have any suggestions for topics to write about, let me know!!! I'm doing this because I feel that this information would have been VERY useful to me when I first started using computers/internet.
I can hear the sound of RIAA stormtroopers and attack dogs laying siege your house as we speak.
I always hear it like "Porn in the USA" .
I don't know what I hear it as, as the top few results in YouTube "are not available in your country". Thanks, PRS.
Ah, Songza (music search engine) to the rescue: http://songza.com/z/n7okam
Having read the lyrics I'll now think of the song in a completely different way.
Hmm, that sounds exactly like the type of anti-US song that other nations would want their citizens to hear about the US. Any song that makes the US in general sound like a worse place to live than a third world country or about the same as that won't be on any other nations' banned list.
It reminds me of the commercial a couple years back, where they used CCR's "Fortunate Son". The part they used said "Some folks were born, made to wave the flag. Oooh they're red white & blue." Of course, they cut the line afterwards that said "It ain't me". Talk about missing the point.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I thought of another one. The theme song to CSI is "Won't get fooled again" by the Who. This is a song about anti-authoritarianism. I can hardly think of a more authoritarian show than CSI.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So what's the difference?
Don't expect too much from the city synonymous with Mardis Gras.
Wait, what about Asymmetrical Torrents?
They download music, they upload forbidden news blogs?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Oh, now i guess i'm supposed to think that other nations don't have their patriots of old who have been replaced in modern times by corrupt, selfish, wanton types, huh?
How many Chinese do you think LOVE their current leadership. It's why their current government is doing what it is doing, all in the name of NOT losing power in the form it knows and with which it currently is comfortable. China's government & Chinese nationals are not alone. But, whether the BITUSA lyrics are supposed to be a beacon of shining light or mirror of shame, if the Chinese government *listens*, i mean **really listens**, they can spin whatever they want, and make YOU, ME, or anyone else coming in with political change ambitions suddenly persona non grata. BITUSA might work well for SOME US citizens, but by NO means whatsoever does it neatly drape a flag of hope or optimism onto even Chinese citizens who DO despise or feel disheartened with their own government. The world is NOT that of the USA, and citizens/residents/adherents of/to the USA need to stop casting the US shadow onto other peoples.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
So what's the difference?
Fargo: estimated metropolitan population of 192,417
New Orleans: estimated metropolitan population of 1,030,363
Looks like an order of magnitude, to me.
This is very old news. This site has been operating for over a year now. Top100.cn.
YaoMing was one of the founders (the tall chinese basketball star)...
Some of the downloads are not the cd version of the track, but the live concert version. Some most popular songs are not available. It is hit and miss - but there is still a LOT of good music on it.
How about when they used Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" in a Mercedes commercial? And then there's the unmitigated wierdness of Chevrolet using the chorus of "American Pie" in an ad, which according to Don MacLean they had been trying to license for decades.
Is some sort of server that indexes these links and based on some form of translation helps you find the song that's relevant to your interests. A kind of 'search engine' if you get my meaning.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If it is really legal, who not provide the similar service out of China?
hmmmm, no wonder I cant make any calls now. must....... erase....... everything!
It's the same anti-US message that should be spread in the US as well.