Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The Olympics might be just about to kick off in Beijing, but Google has managed to snatch a small piece of media attention by announcing the launch of Google Music Onebox: a free music search and download service in China.
There were some reports earlier in the year which suggested
that Google would be entering the Chinese digital music downloads
market with the help of EMI, Sony BMG and Universal. The service is now up and running, but exactly which labels are involved is shrouded in some oriental mystery.
According to the Shanghai Daily the
Google Music Onebox has been launched with the assistance of the Top100.cn service. Top who what?
Good question, and the answer is that when it was launched in February
2006, Top100.cn claimed to be the
largest legitimate music download site in the Chinese market.
Unfortunately for them, and Google, there is Baidu.com to contend with. It's MP3 search and download
site is the undisputed market leader as far as China is concerned with
some 62.8 percent of the Chinese search market by revenue.
The fact that much of this comes courtesy of that highly controversial
music download section is highly relevant. Controversial because there
have been lawsuits and complaints from music publishers regarding the
copyright status of these MP3s.
Top100.cn, meanwhile, had entered into licensing agreements with both
EMI and Sony BMG on launch, as well as domestic Chinese labels.
Although Google has not stated which labels form part of the new
service, one would assume that part of the attraction of Top100.cn
would be those big name licenses combined with the local Chinese outfits.
Whatever, the free musical Chinese takeaway is the first free music
download service to come out of the Google stable. It will be
interested to see how it pans out, and if it heralds a new wave of
gTunes services worldwide...
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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