EMI Group Plc, Sony BMG and the world's biggest record companies are offering free music by Beyonce Knowles and John Lennon on the Internet in China to tap advertisers in a market where 80 percent of songs are pirated.
Sina Corp (新浪), China's biggest Web portal, will split sales from advertising with the record companies, which include Warner Music Group Corp, Universal Music Group and Taiwan's Rock Records (滾石唱片), CEO Charles Chao (趙廣民) said yesterday in a telephone interview from Beijing.
The service provides streaming music, which can't be downloaded to personal computers, he said.
Record companies are offering free music to bypass piracy in the world's second-biggest Internet market by users. The agreement with Shanghai-based Sina will help the music companies win a share of the Chinese online ad market, which may double sales in the two years to next year to 11.8 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion), the Internet Society of China said.
"We see a lot of potential in music," Chao said. "Fee-based music services haven't really caught on in China, but there are other ways to make money from the demand for music."
The tie-up involves an unspecified profit-sharing scheme from advertising, download fees and revenue from wireless value-added services. But Chao declined to give financial details of the agreement.
Users can download the music to their mobile phones. Songs typically sell for less than 10 yuan each, said Fu Chen, a Shanghai-based Sina spokeswoman.
Statistics showed that by the end of last year China's number of mobile phone users exceeded 460 million, while Internet subscribers reached around 130 million.
Sales of pirated music in China totaled US$410 million in 2005, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a music industry group whose members include Sony BMG, EMI, Warner, and Universal.
London-based EMI signed an agreement in January to provide free streaming copies of its Chinese-language music on the Web site of Baidu.com Inc (
The research firm iSuppli forecast earlier last year that the global digital music market by 2010 is likely to hit nearly US$14.9 billion, a six-fold increase from in 2005, and see its share in the whole music industry rise from 12 percent last year to 40 percent, iSuppli said.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under