gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials » emi http://www.ghacks.net A technology news blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:29:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Free Legal Music Downloads: In Chinahttp://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/30/free-legal-music-downloads-in-china/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/30/free-legal-music-downloads-in-china/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:18:07 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/30/free-legal-music-downloads-in-china/ Downloading music is illegal, right? That’s what the Music Industry is telling us all the time. They sue people who download music and do everything in their might to keep up the image that music downloading is a major crime.This is however apparently not true in China where Google struck a deal with major players in the Music Industry – to be precise Universal, EMI, Warner and Sony – to provide free full songs in their search engine. About 350K songs are offered in the beginning. That number is said to rise to 1.1 million songs in the next months alone. The songs will feature both local Chinese artists but also international acts.

The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

google music downloads

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world cannot.

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/30/free-legal-music-downloads-in-china/feed/ 4 DRM Free Songs come to iTuneshttp://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/02/drm-free-songs-come-to-itunes/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/02/drm-free-songs-come-to-itunes/#comments Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:36:06 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/02/drm-free-songs-come-to-itunes/ Apple and Emi announced today that the entire digital repertoire from Emi music can be purchased at Apples iTunes store without DRM. The songs will be offered at a higher quality which means an encoding quality of 256 Kbps instead of the usual 128 Kbps. There is however one downside: The DRM free songs cost $1.29 per song instead of the usual price of $0.99 per song. I’m a little bit concerned about the 30% increase which can not be explained rationally I think. Albums on the other side will not change in prices at all which makes the single song price increase a mystery to me.

Music Videos can also be purchased DRM free with no change in price. If you did purchase EMI songs on iTunes before you can upgrade the existing song to the DRM free version for $0.30 per song. This is definitely a step in the right direction, the only thing that really bothers me is the increased price for single tracks which surely is reasoned by EMI with losses due to people spreading the songs more freely around the net.

Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, said, “Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music.”

This is absolutely a step in the right direction and the other major music labels will surely follow the lead if EMI will be reporting better growth rates that can be attributed to DRM free downloads. Time to get rid of DRM altogether, are you listening MPAA ?

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