Google launches free, legal music downloads in China

Google Inc on Monday launched free downloads of licensed songs in China, while sharing advertising revenue with major music labels in a market rife with online piracy.

Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said one reason Google lagged in the mainland search market was because it did not offer music downloads, the missing piece to its strategy in a market where it trails leader Baidu.com Inc.

“We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads,” Lee told reporters. “We were missing one piece … we didn’t have music.”

The service offers downloads of some 350,000 songs — from Chinese and foreign artists — a number that will rise to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen, chief executive of Google’s partner www.Top100.cn, a Chinese music website co-founded by basketball star Yao Ming.

Music from artists signed by Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music will be available on the service, which Google has no current plans to expand beyond China, said Lee.

“This is the first serious attempt to start (monetizing) the online market in China. I can’t overestimate how important this is,” said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia Pacific and Asia chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Users will be able to search by musical measurements such as the level of “beat” in a song and “instrumentality,” as well as by artist and song name.

IFPI said last year that more than 99 percent of all music files distributed in China are pirated, and the country’s total legitimate music market, at $76 million, accounts for less than 1 percent of global recorded music sales.

The new service will attract users away from illegal download sites because the music and service will be of a higher quality, said Warner’s Rutherford.

Downloads of unlicensed music and videos are rampant in China, the world’s biggest Internet market by number of users.

While Google dominates the global web search market, in China Baidu holds more than 60 percent of the market, more than double Google’s share.

Thanko strikes again

Famous crap gadget maker Thanko has updated its website over the weekend with yet another whacky USB device. Believe it or not but they are now selling a USB cigarette. Everyone is familiar with the concept of electric cigarettes by now, but Thanko’s version works in a slightly different way.

Thanko says its USB cigarette is particularly healthy as it doesn’t have nicotine or tar. Users inhale a substance that apparently tastes like sweet mint, but my guess is smokers are supposed to get the feeling of holding and smoking a cigarette.

The cigarette charges via USB (which takes 2-3 hours for some reason) and comes with an atomizer and 11 filter butts. It costs $33 and should show up in Thanko’s English online store soon.

Nokia E71x, Samsung Propel Pro, other stuff coming to AT&T

Good morning and welcome to AT&T’s omnibus launch of multiple phones, including the Nokia E71x and the Samsung Propel Pro. The E71x, essentially one of Nokia’s best QWERTY phones, costs $99 with contract and the QWERTY Propel Pro costs $149.99.

The Impression is also coming out with an AMOLED screen for $199 and two LG lumps, the Xenon and Neon, will be popping off the periodic table and into your pocket for about $99. Fun fact: “The Xenon is also featured in MTV’s upcoming series “The Phone”, executive produced by Justin Timberlake.”

Full release after the jump.

AT&T Unveils New Integrated Devices for Texting, Email and More

New Lineup of Smartphones and Quick Messaging Phones Offer the Latest in Style and Substance for Mobile Messengers

DALLAS, March 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Text messaging and email are still the ‘killer app’ for mobile phone data use and AT&T is responding with a great new lineup of phones for the Spring season. AT&T* today announced a fresh new lineup of smartphones and quick messaging phones that make it easier for customers to message with friends and family and manage their business and personal lives on-the-go. Arriving in AT&T stores and online at www.wireless.att.com in the coming weeks, these integrated devices add to AT&T’s leading mobile phone portfolio.

In the smartphone category, AT&T debuted the Nokia E71x and the Samsung Propel(TM) Pro, two stylish smartphones that inspire fun, while delivering serious functionality. In addition, the Samsung Impression(TM) and Samsung Magnet(TM), and LG Xenon and Neon emerge to the lead AT&T’s lineup of quick messaging phones and expands the number of full-keyboard mobile phones in AT&T’s lineup to seven. Pictures of the new lineup are available at www.att.com/mobilehandsets-news.

“Smartphones and quick messaging phones are no longer for early-adopters and text-happy teens,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “The ability to text often, or check your email from a phone is easy and more customers demand these features. These phones are a great addition to our best-in-class lineup and we can’t wait to get them in our customers’ hands in the coming weeks.”

Nokia E71x

The thinnest smartphone on the market, the Nokia E71x, will be available in the coming weeks for $99.99(1) and features a black steel finish and award-winning design. The Nokia smartphone, based on S60 on Symbian OS(TM) offers the Wi-Fi and the flexibility of many Symbian-based applications, in addition to AT&T’s most popular services, including AT&T Navigator. The Nokia E71x is just 10 millimeters thin and will turn heads when you text friends, or check your corporate or personal email. Customers can learn more at http://www.att.com/nokiaE71x.

Samsung Propel(TM) Pro

The Propel Pro, a full-QWERTY silver and chrome compact slider smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.1 allows users to run full enterprise applications on the same platform they use to text and send photos. Evolving from the popular Samsung Propel(TM), business users and consumers looking for a full-feature smartphone with Wi-Fi will look to the Propel Pro, available in April for $149.99(1).

Samsung Impression(TM)

The nation’s first commercially available AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen results in one of the brightest and clearest displays in the U.S. and is paired with a keyboard underneath an amazingly slim, metallic blue quick messaging phone that’s all touch screen on the outside, all buttons on the inside. On sale for $199.99(1), the Impression has an included 3.0 megapixel camcorder-capable camera, 3.2-inch screen and full browser to maximize every pixel of color.

LG Xenon

A quick messaging phone boasting a full keypad for text messaging beneath its vibrant colors and large touch screen display with customizable and intuitive user interface, the 3G-powered LG Xenon snaps 2.0 megapixel photos and offers the full suite of AT&T entertainment services such as AT&T Navigator, Napster Mobile, eMusic Mobile, and more. Xenon will be available in three colors: black, blue and red for $99.99(1). The Xenon is also featured in MTV’s upcoming series “The Phone”, executive produced by Justin Timberlake.

LG Neon

Teens and text-happy adults will enjoy the LG Neon, a low-cost touch screen device available in the coming weeks. The green and white quick messaging phone features a full keyboard, 2.0 megapixel camera, and access to Instant Messaging, Mobile Email, AT&T Music, and the mobile Internet.

Samsung Magnet(TM)

The Magnet is an incredibly slim orange and black bar-shaped device that will appeal to teens who need a low-cost, quick messaging phone. The Magnet features a WAP browser and integrated camera in its sleek package and will be offered at an affordable price in the coming weeks.

All six devices can be paired with messaging bundles offering 200, 1500, and unlimited messages that cost $5, $15 and $20, respectively. Unlimited messaging is available for AT&T FamilyTalk(R) plan customers for all lines for $30. Data plans vary per device.

Samsung Impression and Propel Pro will arrive in AT&T stores on April 7 and 14, respectively, and the LG Xenon will go on sale on April 8. The Nokia e71x, LG Neon and Samsung Magnet will be available in the following weeks.

Streamzy Done Streaming, Up For Sale On eBay

Now that popular music streaming service SeeqPod has decided to sell its source code to developers to spawn more clones, one of the media search startups that built upon its API is apparently calling it quits: Streamzy, which we profiled in July 2008, is selling itself on eBay at a starting bid of $1,000, provided it’s not a lame April Fools joke (the bidding ends April 1).

The service amassed merely 2,400 registered users since its launch in early 2008, and has a monthly visitor rate of only 7,000. The back-end runs for free on Google App Engine and the Flex front-end code will be included should someone decide to pick up the site.

For context: the music labels aren’t only targeting SeeqPod anymore but also developers who use its API, so we’re not sure anyone will be inclined to bid, unless of course if it’s just for the name, logo and domain name.

Twitter Hiring A Concierge To Pamper Celebrities. Requires Schmoozing.

I don’t care much for the celebrity culture, but clearly I’m in the minority judging by the amount of people who read gossip magazines and websites in order to get updates on every move their idols make. Twitter has already proven to be a great way for a number of celebrities to bypass those media and enabled them to let their audience know what they’re having for lunch straight away, unfiltered, unless of course there’s a PR machine doing the 140-character typing for them.

Either way, Twitter has gotten a lot of (occasionally unfavorable) press thanks to celebrities who join the service and provide their fans with some insight on their activities and whereabouts, and often engage in conversations with them online or by SMS.

Now Twitter is hiring a VIP Concierge to pamper said celebrities, according to their latest job opening on JobScore. His or her job? Make sure the celebrities on Twitter are ‘happy’ and use the service effectively, whatever that means. You can read the rest of the job description on JobScore, but basically Twitter is hiring someone who will have to sway new celebrities into joining the micro-sharing service and make sure the ones that are already on there keep on tweeting their hearts out, so the startup can get even more press.

Skype for iPhone officially official

Are you prepared to have your mind blown? As expected, Skype for iPhone will appear “sometime Tuesday” and allow you to make VoIP calls to friends and family all over the world, a move that at once blows a great waft of flatulence in the face of the carriers and, in one smooth motion, high fives the international community of Skype users.

It should be available from the App Store for free.

You obviously cannot make a Skype call over 3G or EDGE but you can make VoIP calls over Wi-Fi. The system also meshes with your iPhone contacts and allows you to filter and search based on users who already have Skype accounts and even make SkypeOut calls, again under Wi-Fi.

You can also chat with friends and family using the iPhone’s keyboard and the system brings in avatars from your Skype sessions.

VoIP has long been a bugaboo for the carriers and the addition of Skype essentially blows their arguments a new one. Skype is a formalized, popular app and the outcry if they had “banned” it would have been mighty. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and now we can have our VoIP calls and chatting without fear of harsh and righteous retribution.

Skype, the Internet calling service that has more than 400 million users around the world, is aggressively moving onto mobile phones.

The Luxembourg-based company, a division of eBay, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will make its free software available immediately for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch and, beginning in May, for various BlackBerry phones, made by Research in Motion.

Other companies have already made software for those phones that works with Skype, but it does not offer all of the service’s features.

As with Skype on the computer, users of Skype on mobile phones can make calls and send instant messages to other Skype users free, and they pay lower rates than the phone companies would charge when they use Skype to call landlines or other mobile phones.

This year, Skype announced versions of its software for Nokia phones and phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Google’s Android operating systems.

Apple will limit Skype’s use on the iPhone somewhat, allowing Skype calls to be made only when the device is connected to local Wi-Fi networks, and not allowing Skype calls over the data networks of its carrier partners like AT&T. Apple imposes the same restrictions on all voice applications in its App Store.

The idea of bringing Skype to mobile phones has always been viewed by cellular operators as potentially threatening. It opens up the possibility that people will use their data plans to make calls using Skype, instead of the more expensive and profitable voice minutes on the carriers’ cellular networks.

“The carriers are in the business of selling voice minutes. For a long time they saw products like Skype coming along and they were concerned,” said Ben Wood, director of Research at the London-based CCS Insight, a market research firm. “But it turned out a little bit different than they expected.”

Mr. Wood said many carriers had modified their views about so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, services. In some cases, Skype has proved to be appealing to consumers and a competitive advantage for a carrier over its rivals.

Skype tested its service in London in the last two years with Hutchison 3, a British mobile network. It said it drew more customers to Hutchison 3 and increased its revenue for each user, since people were making calls on their cellphones using Skype that high calling rates would have discouraged otherwise.

Scott Durchslag, Skype’s chief operating officer, said he did not think the limitations on using Skype on the iPhone would be a big drawback for users, since Wi-Fi networks have become common.

However, he said he hoped Apple and AT&T would relax restrictions and let people make Skype calls anywhere they roamed. “We think these things should work on any device, any network, at any time,” he said.

Google China Signs Big Music For Free MP3 Search Engine

Google China has taken the beta label off its dedicated, free MP3 search engine now that the local Google branch announced deals with all four major music labels (Warner, Universal, EMI and Sony) at a press conference earlier today. The website, which had been in beta for over a year, can be found here, or you can try the translated version (note that you won’t be able to download or listen to songs outside of the country).

The site offers over a million music tracks thanks to a partnership with Top100.cn (a company Google has invested in), most of them Chinese but also foreign tunes approved by the government. For example, users can download the latest Metallica album free of charge, of which you can see a screenshot below. Apart from the four labels mentioned above, several major publishers and 140+ indie labels are said to be on board.