Google Launches Free, Legal Music Downloads in China 141
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.
Legal? and in....China? (Score:5, Funny)
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So what's the difference?
The hurricane?
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So what's the difference?
Don't expect too much from the city synonymous with Mardis Gras.
Proxy anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a perfect way for the US to download high quality music with nothing more than a simple proxy.
Re:Proxy anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
And to think, all this time, they've been trying to get outside of the firewall. Now we want in!
Re:Proxy anyone? Until... (Score:1, Insightful)
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" (W
Re:Proxy anyone? Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
'"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.
Re:Proxy anyone? Until... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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I always hear it like "Porn in the USA" .
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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 [slashdot.org].
Ah, Songza (music search engine) to the rescue: http://songza.com/z/n7okam [songza.com]
Having read the lyrics I'll now think of the song in a completely different way.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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Re:Get Inside! (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, what about Asymmetrical Torrents?
They download music, they upload forbidden news blogs?
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Surprisingly, it sounds a lot like "blonde slut" once translated.
Re:Proxy anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
These are right in the Unicode database.
apt-get install unicode-data /usr/share/unicode/Unihan.txt.bz2 /usr/share/unicode/Unihan.txt.bz2
zgrep 'kDefinition.*blonde'
zgrep 'kDefinition.*slut'
The fun thing is, it's easier to search by meaning than by pronouciation or by how the character looks...
Link? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone have a link to this so I can start the downloading?
Or do I need a Chinese proxy first?
Re:Link? (Score:5, Informative)
You will need a Chinese proxy.
I can read just enough Chinese to know which is the download link, but what songs I get is the luck of the draw.
Re:Link? (Score:5, Funny)
Shall we call it Chinese Roulette instead of Russian Roulette?
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I can read just enough Chinese to know which is the download link, but what songs I get is the luck of the draw.
Shall we call it Chinese Roulette instead of Russian Roulette?
They're not that dissimilar; if you inadvertantly download "The Free Tibet Song", then the owner of the proxy gets a bullet through the head.
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No you get 3 of your friends together, click random links, run around the car, and sit in each others' chairs, and then you get whatever the other person clicked on. That way it's still random, but you EXPECTED random.
Wait, you'll need a car for this. OK, so you get 3 of your friends, and a car.
OK, you'll need 3 friends as well. So 3 friends, a car, and the internet.
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How about two cats, a dog, a Radio Flyer wagon, some strings and paper cups, will that work instead?
Re:Link? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, there's also a flash based youtube/winamp-like player so you can preview very quickly.
Then there is a right click context menu for downloading mp3s. The ones I got were all 192kbps.
Best fucking music download site ever! Roll out world wide please.
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The ones I got were all 192kbps.
Proponents of the new service are also hoping it will combat illegal music downloads simply by offering higher quality songs for download.
192kbs mp3 is higher quality?? I do not think those words mean what they think they mean...
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Course, my hearing's a bit shot from all those years listening to rock at max volume, so 128kbs sounds good to me. I'm not an audiphile.
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Uh, many "illegal" downloads come in full lossless quality. 192kbs !> 900+kbs
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If by very high end you mean $15 headphones, then sure.
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you missed the ubiquity story ?
that plugin will translate the text for you to whatever you like it seems
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I would love to give you the proxy address but it would get slashdotted really fast, and I haven't finished pirating yet so...Drink up me Hearties Yo Ho.
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Surprised! (Score:2, Insightful)
Positive Reinforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Positive Reinforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's why we make it easier for copyright holders to get information out of the ISPs starting tomorrow (IPRED, 1st april 2009) so we can get RIAA/MPAA "pay your way out" deals before it ever reaches actual prosecution over here to.
Demanding fees from people who probably deserves it will most likely be easier to get by with than turning everyone into criminals and charging them as such.
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If they're giving it away for free, I wonder what'll that'd do the the "value" of the songs they keep insisting are worth hundreds of bucks each.
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the same thing giving trillions of dollars away to big companies does to the average working stiff's savings: make them worthless.
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And also too big to fail...
Trying to Compete (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
China is Solvent (Score:2)
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There are no immediate plans to expand this service beyond China.
Proof right there that there isn't enough piracy in Sweden!
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So... (Score:4, Funny)
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Give it away, Give it away, Give it away now... (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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Stick it to the man!
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Why not? I just don't do the "advertise" part.
Friends get the URL, archive.org has a backup of mp3s... It's sad to have them duplicate the disk space, but that's why I have movies/etc robotsed off. The music I listen to is rare old Black Metal, quite hard to find. But no, I won't post the URL on slashdot.
The bands are mostly already gone -- so it's a pure win for the society.
Be a man(/woman), symlink your ~/mp3 from Apache today!
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I have a policy in my circle of friends / family that they simply name the album / film / game they want and if I already have it it's up as soon as I can stick it on my FTP. If I don't have it they wait a few days while I "acquire" it.
The advantages to this scheme:
1: I look like an amazingly hoopy frood for giving away free stuff
2: it's secure as shit as it's so personal
3: I don't have to fix their PCs when they get some dodgy wares.
Win-win all round :)
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You sir are correct. Basically what they're doing is requiring individuals in countries that enforce copyright legislation subsidize the prices for individuals in nations that don't enforce it. Remind me again why exactly we're better off with the sort of thuggish protectionism that characterizes US IP policy.
New business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
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1. Give music away for free
2. ???
3. The Undead roam the Earth
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2. Spread information and knowledge across the globe for free, for all of mankind. Innovation happens faster, with an explosively booming economy and art to die for as result.
3. The Undead roam the Earth
That last step seemed strange to me too initially, but I heard it from a reliable source during the Pirate Bay trial so it must be true.
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Re:New business plan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New business plan (Score:5, Funny)
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"You heard the man. Now crank it up to eleven!" - Google
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I assume that, being Google, ads will accompany the download service. Also, since the labels agreed to it, I would assume that they get a cut of the ad revenue.
It may be an issue of the record labels simply agreeing to take something over nothing, however small that "something" may be.
Re:New business plan (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Create content that people want online.
2) Give content away for free.
3) Charge advertisers for ads delivered alongside content.
4) Profit!
As their profit is measured in the billions, offhand I would say this is a pretty good business plan.
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1) Create content that people want online.
Google never has created any content. They make money off of content created by others. An excellent business plan, as long as you have the near-monopoly needed to make it work.
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It's just as well Google had that monopoly, otherwise they'd never have got off the ground </sarcasm>
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I think it is:
Phase 1: Give away music for free 2: ? Phase 3: Profit
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You wanna get rid of a pest, you stop feeding it and it dies of starvation.
Smart Business Model (Score:2)
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.
Questions (Score:2)
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?
won't fly (Score:2)
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.
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They're not *selling* anything, though. It's all completely free.
The money comes from ads...
I didn't see any when I checked it out, but then again, I don't read/speak/understand chinese
Google's music download address (Score:1)
Google's music download service in China:
http://g.cn/music [g.cn]
and their very cool music screener
http://www.google.cn/music/songscreener [google.cn]
we have both kinds, country AND western! (Score:4, Funny)
the library includes both Chinese and foreign artists
But ... but ... but Chinese artists ARE foreign!!
To help you all out: (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.xroxy.com/proxylist.php?port=&type=&ssl=&country=CN&latency=1000&reliability=9000&sort=latency#table
"Easy listening songs" from google: here [google.cn].
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 ord
Offtopic baidu test (Score:2, Interesting)
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The chinese firewall at work. That's how it works, it was covered many many times previously here on Slashdot.
Btw, we here in Germany are getting our very own firewall very soon too and our proletariat seems to love it.
Free? (Score:1)
Again, I compete with people who pay less (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Yes, thank you. This is exactly the problem with free-trade, it seems to be designed entirely to sap the wealth out of richer countries and give them to poorer countries. Free-trade in principal would be a great idea, except for the fact that it seems the US (and a very few other western nations) are the only countries that actually practice the 'free' part of free-trade.
Oh yeah, sure export your foreign vehicles, do you mind if we send some to you Japan? Oh what's that, you put giant tariffs and unit limit
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That's exactly what has happened, except in the reverse order.
Prices dropped (relatively) on consumer goods due to globalisation (see prices at Walmart, for example). Wages stayed high. Now, due to the recession, wages are dropping (in effect -- more people unemployed ~= lower wages).
Not you specifically, but anyone who complains about globalisation or offshoring, but shop
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I pay $50k for a college education, they come here to the same school and get massively subsidized.
First, really smart people from anywhere gets subsidized, period. Other than that, foreign students pays high tuition and no program to subsidize them (some would work illegally on the side). Most the subsidies you talked about are in science/tech Ph.D. programs where there is usually fee remission with TA-ship/RA-ship. Not every PI enthusiastically takes on foreign student because they do cost more of their grant money. Frankly I think the issue is that there aren't just enough native Ph.D. students (for
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You don't HAVE to pay first-world prices for those things; that's what the global marketplace is all about. The catch is, you don't "have" to get a first-world salary, either.
But let's get this straight. Foreign students pay higher tuition fees. That's why colleges are so keen to get international students and their money. Of course, many of them come from places where the income level isn't high enough to afford those inflated fees, so they have to earn it through work-study or merit-based scholarships.
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Our first world salary has been going down for 20 years while the rich and executive classes salaries went up by 300x.
As for the "global" marketplace-- reread what I said.
Companies sell their products extremely inexpensively in poor countries, extremely expensively in rich companies, and have laws passed to prevent product flow from where they sell the same exact product for 1/10th of the price.
The way it used to work is that if you sold a TV for $50 in Cleveland, and $500 in California, a cross import busi
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It really seems like the world economy exists to pump the wealth out of my environment.
I see this going on in my country as well (small West-European). Except, we actively aid this process by spending 0.8% of our GDP to foreign aid. Personally, I feel that we lead a pretty good life and I also feel it's my moral obligation to pass on some of that wealth.
I have the feeling you're seeing the issue cast in a negative light. Instead, think about how you're in the luxurious position of being able to miss some of your earnings.
Enough with the touchy-feely, on to the facts...
as a percent of gross national income, its contribution is only 0.2%, proportionally much smaller than than contributions of countries such as Sweden (1.04% and the United Kingdom (0.52%).
-- Foreign aid by the [wikipedia.org]
What keeps Baidu from... (Score:1)
DRM (Score:1)
lettaudesigns (Score:1)
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*Slaps with a glove*
I challange you, sir, to a duel!
Through I do agree about google.
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Not really legal (Score:2, Interesting)
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Can anyone manage to read a single sentance?
Maybe I'll step up and read a whole paragraph when you learn to spell.
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pot...meet kettle.
will always follow the past of least resistance
Should be " path of least resistance " ...just so you know for next time.
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"Can anyone manage to read a single ... "
Oh look, a chinese music link to go click!
Re:How do you compete with free? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Can I get a female adrenaline rush?
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It's the adrenaline rush that males all the difference.
I prefer females.
Exactly... (Score:1)
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Because you have some source of lossless audio other than online?
Unless you buy the audio directly from the studio after is recorded before any sort of post processing, you are getting lossy compressed audio. 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.
Even CDs are lossy to some extent just because of errors during mass production. The goal is to not loss qual
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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 [wikipedia.org].
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Yeah, that... You may wanna look up quantization, though...
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And hell, if you're paying for cables, they'd better be made of solid gold.
Maybe audiophiles are the future for the RIAA. 320Kbps AACs will be available for free, but FLACs of studio masters will cost $500 per track and will be eagerly snapped up by those who claim to be able to tell the difference.