谷歌中国音乐服务逐渐壮大
【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.
【中文译文】
谷歌中国音乐服务每天提供大约500万首歌曲。这项服务是谷歌和巨鲸音乐网()组建的合资企业。巨鲸音乐网是中国北京巨鲸音乐网络技术有限责任公司旗下网站。
巨鲸首席执行长陈戈在一次采访中首次透露了这项音乐服务的运营情况细节。他说，目前已经有5家客户签署了广告合约，其中包括诺基亚(Nokia)、苹果(Apple)以及大众汽车(Volkswagen)，总金额达到了人民币250万元（约合37万美元）。
他说，巨鲸和谷歌预计还会签下几个广告合约，每份合约有望每年带来100万美元的收入，希望半年内广告客户总数达到30家。
目前全球其他音乐服务都要求用户购买单独歌曲或专辑，或是要求支付会员费。这些举措在打击网络音乐盗版方面成效有限，这个问题近年来给音乐行业带来了沉重打击。
但随着CD销量萎缩，唱片公司变得更加愿意尝试新的业务模式。
谷歌中国音乐服务提供了世界四大唱片公司的全球目录音乐，包括华纳音乐(Warner Music Group)、Vivendi旗下环球唱片(Universal Music)、百代公司(EMI Group)以及索尼公司(Sony Corp.)旗下的索尼音乐娱乐公司(Sony Music Entertainment)。
谷歌中国音乐服务目前提供70万首曲目的下载，高于3月份的35万首；陈戈说，这一数字年底前将增至110万首。
根据合资结构，巨鲸与唱片公司大体均分广告收入。谷歌则受益于中国网站的流量增长，其可以在网站的音乐搜索页面上销售搜索广告。
谷歌和唱片公司希望这项服务能够从谷歌的中国竞争对手那里吸引来用户，尤其是百度(Baidu Inc.)。市场研究公司易观国际(Analysys International)的数据显示，今年第二季度百度占据了中国搜索市场61%的收入份额，而谷歌的份额为29%。
百度和其他中国搜索网站帮助用户搜寻和下载非授权音乐，从而通过搜索页面获得了巨大的流量。
音乐行业管理人士说，他们还希望谷歌音乐服务能让他们获知哪些艺人和歌曲在中国流行；由于数据不可靠，音乐市场一直很难做到这点。
在其他地区，一些其他业务模式也吸引了用户关注，例如总部位于伦敦的Spotify就凭藉着广告支持，在欧洲推出了在线音乐播放服务。
Spotify已经拥有超过500万名用户，用户可以在线收听带有商业广告的音乐，或是付费收听不带广告的音乐。该公司说，计划在美国和中国也推出这项服务。
