Google, in conjunction with over 15 record labels, has announced the launch of a free online music download service that will allow anyone in mainland China to download over 1.1 million tracks for free.
The service has music from Chinese labels, Warner Music Group Corp., EMI Group Ltd., Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music, as well as 14 independent labels and the service will be limited to those using an IP address showing they are in mainland China.
“This is the first really serious attempt to start monetizing online music in China,” said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia and regional head of the IFPI.
China has been the poster child for music piracy, with some Chinese music acts admitting to no longer recording because piracy has made the business unprofitable.
Kai-Fu Lee, Google’s president for Greater China, says that 84 percent of the Chinese population uses search engines to search for music. “With today’s offering, we complete the puzzle and offer a complete set of services that are fully integrated,” he added.
China currently has over 300 million Internet users.
Result for: puzzle
According to new data from Mobclix, there are now over 6000 games available in the Apple App Store, giving iPhone and iPod Touch owners a large variety of free and paid downloads.
There are now 6276 games, with 1516 offered as free downloads. Puzzle games are the most popular genre, while racing games are the least popular. Puzzle games account for 18 percent of all the games available.
The most popular free game by far is Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge 2, which is somewhat of a Guitar Hero clone that allows users to tap out songs. The most popular paid game is the excellent Pocket God by Bolt Creative which allows you to play “God” of six pygmies on an island.
The second largest category of apps is “Entertainment” followed closely by “Books” and “Utilities.”
Result for: puzzle
In a panel discussion Tuesday at the HD3 conference in Century City, industry figures with a stake in the Blu-ray Disc format raised concerns over how the economy will hit the Blu-ray format over the holidays. Now that the format war is over and a lot of money has been put into promoting Blu-ray through retailers, the format’s backers had hoped for a strong performance this holiday season.
“The economy is the biggest challenge, because there are just so many pieces to the Blu-ray puzzle that consumers face,” said Lori MacPherson, GM of domestic home-entertainment at Disney. “You need the high-definition television set, you need the player, you need the cables, you need the software…” MacPherson still believes Disney’s seasonal slew of new releases and catalog titles in the Blu-ray format will help move consumers towards the format.
“The economy is hitting everybody,” said Danny Kaye, executive vp research and tech strategy at Fox. “But we still look forward to a great fourth quarter.” There is good news on the horizon however for high-definition video equipment. “I know the economy is tough right now, but the manufacturers are really bringing down the price of their HDTV sets,” Paramount vp marketing Chris Saito said.
Blu-ray player prices are falling but not as fast as many consumers would like. The disc sales themselves also present a problem, since new DVDs retail for around $15, whereas Blu-ray releases go for around $25. “We’re all constantly looking at (disc) pricing,” Sony vp business development Rich Marty said. “What it amounts to is that we’ll wait until after the fourth quarter and see how it goes.”
[More]>>
