Access Denied! That’s the message greeting China-based readers of Rollingstone.com, the online version of the iconic music and cultural magazine Rolling Stone. But this isn’t the work of the rampaging Net Nanny but rather a deliberate block on Chinese IP addresses that seems to stem from the publishers. That ain’t very rock ‘n’ roll. As it’s a geolocation-based restriction, let’s say it has been geotarded, which is my favourite etymologically-edgy epithet. This is usually done by music or video content providers who want to stop certain regions from accessing licensed content, ...
Tag Archives: Music
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Jan 19 2012
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Karaoke Gets Even More Social, Competitive, With This Cute Web App
Karaoke is already a pretty social activity, but one Chinese startup wants to make it even more so. iHou allows users to sing pop songs online, get a score for their performances, challenge other people to a sing-off, and then share your score and recorded performances online. It’s all so neat and so perfectly fitting for China, where karaoke (or ‘KTV’ as it’s called here) is a really popular pastime, that I’m surprised one of the Chinese web giants hasn’t done this already. The site is not new - having been started ...
Dec 8 2011
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MusicYun is the Chinese Music Streaming Service With Its Head in the Cloud
Streaming music from the cloud is no longer such a wonderment - but a Chinese music service that also lets you upload and share your own tracks? That’d be quite something. And that’s the approach taken by MusicYun, a startup from Shanghai. It’s not quite a Google Music level of effort, inevitably, and much of it seems reliant on the strength of the community. It’s also a legal quagmire, as anything that another user uploads then becomes a part of MusicYun’s catalog, and I can’t verify if/how the music is moderated ...
Nov 15 2011
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Slick New Web Apps From Youku Entice You to Study, Then Party
Youku (NYSE:YOKU), China’s biggest online video site, has today launched two new web apps on its platform. One is an impressive virtual classroom where you can view the lecture’s slides and make notes all on the same page; the other is a party-oriented music-video feature where you can easily make playlists or sing along to the lyrics. The diverse and slick-looking web apps - called Youku Classroom and Youku Music Box (pictured above), respectively - have been made by the Youku Labs division and incorporate some social media elements as well. Back ...
Nov 4 2011
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HTC Sensation XE Beats Coming to China This Month
HTC’s recent purchase of Dr Dre’s Beats Audio company proves that the Taiwanese hardware maker is young and cool and down with that hippety-hop music all the kids are listening to. And now, finally, China has the chance to check out a new Beats-badged phone, as HTC has just announced on its official Sina Weibo account that it’s bringing the white Sensation XE smartphone to mainland China “in mid-November.” The giant Android-powered device has a dual-core 1.5GHz processor - matching the cheaper Xiaomi phone which launched last month - and comes ...
Nov 2 2011
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Selling Western Music Legally in China With 88tc88
Thomas Reemer is the co-founder and CEO of 88tc88, a start-up which helps artists and record labels sell their music legally in China. Reemer told me that there are basically three steps that 88tc88 takes to bring western music over to China: 1) Translate the music, 2) Gain approval from the ministry of culture, 3) Distribute the music with telcos in China, particularly, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. He said that in China, only 2.5 percent of western songs are sold legally in China and many western folks have the ...
Oct 18 2011
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Docomo Aims to Improve Mobile Content With dmenu and dmarket
Earlier this evening we told you about Docomo’s (NYSE:DCM) brand new smartphone lineup. But the company also rolled out a content strategy of sorts, unveiling its new ‘dmenu’ and ‘dmarket’ services. These will become available in November and will aim to improve existing mobile content offerings. According to Docomo, dmenu is a portal site for content from a range of providers, including its own i-mode content. As for dmarket, users can expect to find movies, music, e-books, and Android apps available there. As for dmarket, users can expect to find over ...
Oct 10 2011
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Turntable.fm Gets Cloned in China as Duomi DJ
Chinese music-streaming service Duomi has launched a clone of Turntable.fm, dubbed Duomi DJ. Currently in private beta mode, it’s a very social music service that incorporates sharable playlists, voting on songs that you rack up as a DJ, and chat-rooms. But whereas Turntable.fm links to Facebook, Duomi DJ will hook up to Renren and Tencent/Sina Weibo (or both) - but all that doesn’t seem to have been implemented yet. Although it’s good to see a fun service getting a localization that ties-in with Chinese social media, it’s a pity that Duomi ...
Sep 20 2011
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Report: Pandora Prepping a Move Into China, Looking for Local CEO
The streaming subscription music service Pandora (NYSE:P) is reportedly head-hunting a capable China-area CEO ahead of a Pandora service launch in China. Breaking the news, the Sina Tech portal emphasised that there’s no time-frame in place yet - just this major sign of a move being made towards China’s hundreds of millions of netizens. It’s a positive nod towards the maturation of the digital music industry in China, which was mired in almost total piracy just a few years ago. Pandora apparently has its China CEO short-list down to just a few ...
Aug 28 2011
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Lady Gaga, Backstreet Boys Banned for Being Vulgar? Not so much.
Earlier this week, we reported that China's Ministry of Culture had released a list of 100 banned songs for music websites to delete. We were very careful to specify that these songs were not banned for content, but rather because their content hasn't yet been inspected by the Ministry of Culture and thus the songs aren't yet eligible for listening or download online. It seems, however, that not everybody was reading carefully. E! Online wrote: 's songs lead a list of 100 tunes China's Ministry of Culture is forcing music websites to ban ...
Aug 22 2011
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Chinese Gov’t to Music Websites: Delete These Songs by Sept 15, Or Else
China's Ministry of Culture is cracking down on illegal websites and quasi-illegal songs. Yesterday, it published an announcement stating that unregistered music websites and music sites offering songs that haven't yet been approved by the Ministry of Culture have until September 15th to clean up their acts. Beyond that date, non-cooperating sites will be prosecuted in accordance with the law. Along with the announcement, the Ministry attached a list of 100 popular songs that haven't yet been examined for content and are thus illegal for Chinese music websites to host. Most ...
Aug 16 2011
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iPad To Play A Role in Indonesia Independence Day Ceremony
We already reported about an experiment to remotely mix sound with the iPad via WiFi. Today, the same method will be applied during the 66th Indonesian Independence Day Ceremony, at Istana Merdeka, Jakarta. Kiss Productions, an audio engineering company, will introduce the new technology in front of the president and all honored guests. It coincides with the Istana Merdeka authority’s plan to use the new sound system along with locally-made speakers. As Harry Kiss explained to detikinet, the company will use a time-aligned sound system and prioritize the psychological aspects of ...
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