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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.
Sounds like a perfect way for the US to download high quality music with nothing more than a simple proxy.
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.
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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!
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.
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"
'"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.
You also have to ignore google for a while so they feel it necessary to lure you back with free songs.
So what's the difference?
The hurricane?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The very act of converting from analog to digital is EXTREMELY lossy when you consider the fact that an infinite amount of precision is lost in the process in exchange for long term stability.
Actually, no.
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.