谷歌中國音樂服務逐漸壯大
【英文原文】
Google's China Music Service Gains Fans
Google Inc.'s online music service in China is now providing about five million songs a day and is starting to attract major advertisers though its revenue remains small, a top executive at the U.S. search company's Chinese partner said.
Google's music search, launched in March and currently available only in China, has been closely watched by the music industry because it is the only major service in the world to let users download and stream licensed songs free.
The service is a joint venture between Google and , a site owned by Chinese company Orca Digital.
Offering the first details on how the venture is performing, Gary Chen, chief executive of Orca Digital, said in an interview that five advertisers have signed on for the service so far, including Nokia Corp., Apple Inc. and Volkswagen AG, with total commitments of 2.5 million yuan ($370,000).
Orca Digital and Google expect to sign several more ad deals that could bring in $1 million each, and hope to have a total of 30 advertisers within a half year, he said.
Other music services around the world currently require users to buy individual songs or albums, or pay subscription fees. Those approaches have had limited effectiveness in combating online music piracy that has devastated the music business in recent years.
But with CD sales sinking, music companies have become more willing to experiment with new business models.
The Google China service includes tracks from the world-wide catalogues of the world's four biggest music labels, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music, EMI Group Ltd., and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment.
The service offers roughly 700,000 tracks now, up from 350,000 in March, and Mr. Chen said this will increase to 1.1 million tracks by the end of the year.
Under the venture's structure, Orca Digital shares roughly half of any ad revenues with the music labels. Google benefits from increased traffic on its Chinese site, and can sell search ads on the music search pages on its site.
Google and the labels hope the service will draw users away from the U.S. search giant's Chinese competitors, especially Baidu Inc., which had a 61% share of search revenue in China as of the second quarter compared with Google's 29%, according to research firm Analysys International.
Baidu and other Chinese search sites have generated significant traffic through search pages that help users find and download unlicensed music tracks.
Music industry executives say they also hope Google's music service will let them track which artists and songs are popular in China, something that has been difficult in this market because of unreliable data.
Other models have gained traction among users elsewhere, like London-based ad-supported streaming music service Spotify Ltd. has in Europe.
Spotify has more than five million users who can listen to streaming music with commercials, or pay to listen to ad-free streams, and has said it plans to launch in the U.S. and China as well.
【中文譯文】
谷歌中國音樂服務每天提供大約500萬首歌曲。這項服務是谷歌和巨鯨音樂網()組建的合資企業。巨鯨音樂網是中國北京巨鯨音樂網絡技術有限責任公司旗下網站。
巨鯨首席執行長陳戈在一次採訪中首次透露了這項音樂服務的運營情況細節。他說，目前已經有5家客戶簽署了廣告合約，其中包括諾基亞(Nokia)、蘋果(Apple)以及大衆汽車(Volkswagen)，總金額達到了人民幣250萬元（約合37萬美元）。
他說，巨鯨和谷歌預計還會簽下幾個廣告合約，每份合約有望每年帶來100萬美元的收入，希望半年內廣告客戶總數達到30家。
目前全球其他音樂服務都要求用戶購買單獨歌曲或專輯，或是要求支付會員費。這些舉措在打擊網絡音樂盜版方面成效有限，這個問題近年來給音樂行業帶來了沉重打擊。
但隨着CD銷量萎縮，唱片公司變得更加願意嘗試新的業務模式。
谷歌中國音樂服務提供了世界四大唱片公司的全球目錄音樂，包括華納音樂(Warner Music Group)、Vivendi旗下環球唱片(Universal Music)、百代公司(EMI Group)以及索尼公司(Sony Corp.)旗下的索尼音樂娛樂公司(Sony Music Entertainment)。
谷歌中國音樂服務目前提供70萬首曲目的下載，高於3月份的35萬首；陳戈說，這一數字年底前將增至110萬首。
根據合資結構，巨鯨與唱片公司大體均分廣告收入。谷歌則受益於中國網站的流量增長，其可以在網站的音樂搜索頁面上銷售搜索廣告。
谷歌和唱片公司希望這項服務能夠從谷歌的中國競爭對手那裏吸引來用戶，尤其是百度(Baidu Inc.)。市場研究公司易觀國際(Analysys International)的數據顯示，今年第二季度百度佔據了中國搜索市場61%的收入份額，而谷歌的份額爲29%。
百度和其他中國搜索網站幫助用戶搜尋和下載非授權音樂，從而通過搜索頁面獲得了巨大的流量。
音樂行業管理人士說，他們還希望谷歌音樂服務能讓他們獲知哪些藝人和歌曲在中國流行；由於數據不可靠，音樂市場一直很難做到這點。
在其他地區，一些其他業務模式也吸引了用戶關注，例如總部位於倫敦的Spotify就憑藉着廣告支持，在歐洲推出了在線音樂播放服務。
Spotify已經擁有超過500萬名用戶，用戶可以在線收聽帶有商業廣告的音樂，或是付費收聽不帶廣告的音樂。該公司說，計劃在美國和中國也推出這項服務。
