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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.
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!
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 agree, free and higher quality isn't enough. The music sounds better knowing that you've obtained it illegally. Just like how food tastes better knowing that you'll be dining and dashing. It's the adrenaline rush that males all the difference.
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.
'"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, folks, it really is smug replies all the way down. Even this one! Morons.
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
If it is really legal, who not provide the similar service out of China?