"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."

Doubt it.

"The new service will attract users away from illegal download sites because the music and service will be of a higher quality"...

This is likely to mean that the subsequent clones of the Google downloads will be of higher quality.

Doubt it.

I tend to agree, at least about the downloads, but it's an interesting experiment with regard to the service part. Google and its music company partners are betting that they can extract at least something from market this way, via advertising revenues, vs essentially nothing from trying to sell the music in China directly.

As I read the article, music is a loss-leader here. The music companies are joining Google in an advertising venture that's not too different from Google's basic business model, of advertising-supported search. In this case it's advertising-supported music search.

Uhmmm... what's that smell? desperation maybe?

From Napster to lawsuits, back to something like Napster. It has come full circle. Those fossils running the music companies have finally figured something out.

In the absence of viruses and crappy files that one can find on the peer to peer network, I feel many people would be happy to use this service.

However, they do need to know about it in the first place, and the service should include a large inventory. Whether that will happen, I don't know.

yeah, google music download service is a big improvement, however, whether it can work or not depends. there are many music download sites in China, as the music quality, it's difficult to be sure that music from google is in high quality.

I tend to agree, at least about the downloads, but it's an interesting experiment with regard to the service part. Google and its music company partners are betting that they can extract at least something from market this way, via advertising revenues, vs essentially nothing from trying to sell the music in China directly.

The only one attractive point is that the music is legal. However, this was not so important to the users.

[edited by: Harry08 at 7:21 am (utc) on April 8, 2009]

The only one attractive point is that the music is legal.

In my experience in China, I don't think "legal" is the immediate concern, and in economic downtimes, that may not change for a while.

Beyond search and service, though, I feel that thinker's point goes right to the main issue...

...the absence of viruses and crappy files that one can find on the peer to peer network...