TechAddress

Once More Musicians and Fans Will Get The Shaft

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:31:38 +0000

This has been what could best be described as an interesting few days of us all here in the United States, and particularly those of us in the tech sector and early adopter crowd. Between the official presidential debates (and the online commentary), the online debates, the and the debate on the hill over what we should do with 700 billion, there are a lot of “expert opinions,” and not a lot hard answers. I’ve spoken to a few experts, and done a good deal of thinking, and while I don’t have all the answers, I think I’m closer to understanding everything than I was.

Yesterday, Robert Scoble asked the tech blogosphere’s ’thought leaders’ to weigh in on this issue of the economy (and included Mashable amongst those he invoked), and today all but declared defeat in his search for expert opinion. The problem, I think, is that he’s searching for information in all the wrong places. I too went through the substance withdrawal he’s going through now a while back, and documented it here at Mashable.

Lookin’ for Expert Love in All The Wrong Places…

The grand take-a-way here is that the philosophical model for Wisdom of the Crowds breaks down very easily when it’s subjected to, as James Surowiecki put it, a crowd that is too homogeneous, too centralized, too divided, too imitative, or too emotional. In the case of FriendFeed and Twitter (where Scoble is primarily searching), the crowd fits three of those failure criteria: homogeneous, imitative and emotional.

The tech blogosphere is just that: a homogeneous group of thinkers, coders, executives and writers who on microformat social media platforms imitate each other in a state of emotional pandemoneum. This isn’t a slam - it’s hard not to be emotional when faced with the prospect of economic obliteration (and I for one enjoy the many daily imitative memes started by various members of the community).

Steven Hodson said earlier today that “the idea that a Nobel Laureate of Economics or a discoverer of the Human Genome are going to be found sitting around there computers chumming it up on FriendFeed ot Twitter is ridiculous.” While it’s a true statement, it misses the point a little on the crowd wisdom theory. The limited space requires the reduction of complex ideas to a succinct shortform, that in turns encourages rapid back and forth discussion. Compile the factor of hundreds and thousands of users in close quarters communicating on the same topic, and you’ve got an environment at which truth can be distilled quite rapidly under optimal circumstances.

The problem is that we’re all very clearly divorced from normal circumstances, and the vast majority are all trying to get a handle on topics and lingo that we’d have a hard time understanding in the best of circumstances. I’ve probably been researching the whole economic fiasco more than most, and while I pride myself on understanding macroeconomics better than the average bear, my head is swimming as badly as those who just get the cable news drive-by explanation.

So How do We Make Sense of This?

This is a situation where the standard Internet research techniques don’t really apply. Wikipedia doesn’t really cover breaking news that well, and most of the experts in this game have a chip in this game. Thus, it’s hard to find an idea or interpretation of the situation that’s balanced and reasonable, let alone completely umbiased.

To try an circumvent the punditry and get to a set of opinions I could easily decipher, I started reading the opinions from the various think tanks. The Heritage Institute, the CATO Institute and the Club for Growth. They all had varying ideas about the passage of the bailout bill (and whether it was the best thing for the country), which is no different than asking the various financial publications, politicians and Wall St. pundits.

The difference here is that they are organizations that I’m familiar with, I know each of their guiding principals, and thus know the underlying reasons they make the recommendations they make. I can’t say the same about every politician or Wall Street pundit. They all have biases tied to their jobs, their staffers and all sorts of unknowns that to track down turns into a rabbit hunt. This makes an already complicated task of finding out what’s going on nigh-impossible.

Here’s What I Found Out

That’s why today I decided to go ahead and consult some folks who’s job it is to folow these sorts of things. Back in March, I served on a panel on online privacy with a resident scholar for the CATO Institute by the name of Jim Harper. I gave him a ring and invited him on the program to help put this all in laymens terms.

We’ll be posting the video of that tomorrow morning, but the parameters of the conversation are what’s most germane to this particular piece. We tried to stay away from worst case scenarios as show openers, and talk about what’s actually going on right now in his and his fellow scholars’ experience. We tried to connect the dots in terms of what the various potential scenarios mean for our industry and the general economic health of the nation.

One thing in particular that he said which puts these thoughts in perspective is that a lot of the media is centered in New York City, so the spin we see is heavily colored by the investment bank failure - which is very real, and not by Main Street banks, which as of now seem to be dealing with the crisis in stride. Because the New York City news desks only see what is around them, the calm and unemotional perspective is considerably lacking from most of the coverage.

In our discussion, though, we tried to stay away from blame-casting. It’s not important which party or individuals created this mess. the circumstances that created it are important, because they need to be addressed to prevent a repeat performance. More important, though, is how we weather the storm and what immediate steps are needed to prevent a disaster of catastrophic proportions.

If you want the audio track to our discussion, feel free to subscribe to our audio podcast feed, or come back tomorrow morning and watch the video. In the mean time, I encourage you to not take the pundits words at face value.

Source:Mashable!

The music business has to be one of the most contentious online of all industries with so many players involved. On one side you have the record labels who are facing an ever increasing devaluation of their physical media business. You have the trade organizations for the music industry trying to maintain their power base and millions of dollars of income. Then there are all the online providers of downloadable content trying to eek out marginal profit margins; if you can count millions of dollars as marginal. The last two players though of this complex game of power and money are the musicians themselves and us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers of all that music.

In the last year record companies saw their CD sales fall by 20% to $7.4 Billion while Apple and its online service iTunes is estimated to sell 2.4 billion songs this year giving it about 85% of the online market. Given that it forks over 70 cents of every dollar it collects per song to the record companies Apple’s profit margin is incredibly slim but according to Eddy Cue; iTunes vice president, in a recent CNN Money interview Apple doesn’t believe that the market will bear an increase of the price per song - regardless of what the recording industry might think.

The record industry is asking that the fixed per song payment be scraped in favour of 8% of the wholesalers revenues. In contrast the Digital Media Association who represent online music services like Apple is seeking to get an even lower rate of 4.8 cents per song; or 6% of revenues.

There has been a rumbling that Apple would shutter the iTunes service if the record label succeed in getting their increase. Their argument being that they are making so little money under the current structure and given that they don’t believe the consumer would accept a price increase and they are in the business of losing money. So at this point where itunes is costing they would have no alternative but to close the service:

“If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all,” Cue wrote. “Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.”

Apple close iTunes?

Ya .. right .. and if you believe that I have some excellent bridges for sale. They would increase the price, consumers would bitch for a little while and then it would be back to business as usual.

Have you noticed though who isn’t being included in this decision making process of royalties. That’s right - the musicians. Instead they will have to once more depend on whatever the record labels and trade associations decide to dole out after they have taken their cut of whatever ever agreements are reached. In a business that is rife with cooked books and missing royalty payments to the musicians the idea that they would see any of the possible increase in income is farcical.

Then there is us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers.

Guess what?

We once more have the pleasure of paying more for no other reason that people like the record labels and RIAA want to shore up their power and money streams. We lose - they win.

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Once More Musicians & Fans Will Get The Shaft

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:33:16 +0000

Source:Mashable!

The music business has to be one of the most contentious online businesses with so many players involved. On one side you have the record labels who are facing an ever increasing devaluation of their physical media business. You have the trade organizations for the music industry trying to maintain their power base and millions of dollars of income. Then there are all the online providers of downloadable content trying to eek out marginal profit margins; if you can count millions of dollars as marginal. The last two players though of this complex game of power and money are the musicians themselves and us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers of all that music.

However depending on what happens this coming Thursday when the Copyright Royalty Board set the royalty rates for the next five years; the first possible increase since the online explosion, Apple may have no choice. The record industry is asking that the fixed per song payment be scraped in favour of 8% of the wholesalers revenues. In contrast the Digital Media Association who represent online music services like Apple is seeking to get an even lower rate of 4.8 cents per song; or 6% of revenues.

Apple close iTunes?

Ya .. right .. and if you believe that I have some excellent bridges for sale. They would increase the price, consumers would bitch for a little while and then it would be back to business as usual.

Then there is us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers.

Guess what?

We once more have the pleasure of paying more for no other reason that people like the record labels and RIAA want to shore up their power and money streams. We lose - they win.

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MuxTape To Stop Being a Mixtape

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:30:16 +0000

Source:Mashable!

It looks like MuxTape finally updated their home page to provide a bit of insight as to exactly why they pulled down their functionality. All we knew before was what assumptions we were able to make from their succinct but vague explanation: “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

Now, you can read in great sordid detail exactly what sequence of events lead up to the voluntary takedown of the website.

In short form, they had an inkling that there were going to be problems down the road and acknowledged that they’d end up having to pay cash to the major labels for the rights to play the music, but after an expensive process of hiring lawyers and being threatened with their company’s life, the labels weren’t willing to budge on some key points. Most important amongst these points was that the labels, even if a licensing deal was struck, would not impede any actions by the RIAA against MuxTape:

“…on August 15th, I received notice from Amazon Web Services (the platform that hosts Muxtape’s servers and files) that they had received a complaint from the RIAA. Per Amazon’s terms, I had one business day to remove an incredibly long list of songs or face having my servers shut down and data deleted.

This came as a big surprise to me, as I’d been thinking that I hadn’t heard from the RIAA in a long time because I had an understanding with the labels. I had a panicked exchange of emails with Amazon, trying to explain that I was in the middle of a licensing deal, that I suspected it was a clerical error, and that I was doing everything I could to get someone to vouch for me on a summer Friday afternoon.

My one business day extended over the weekend, and on Monday when I wasn’t able to produce the documentation Amazon wanted (or even get someone from the RIAA on the phone), the servers were shut down and I was locked out of the account. I moved the domain name to a new server with a short message and the very real expectation that I could get it sorted out. I still thought it was all just a big mistake. I was wrong.

Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations. I disagreed. The deals were still weeks or months away (an eternity on the internet) meaning that at best, Muxtape was going to be down until the end of year.

What was particularly interesting to note is that in the beginning of the long explanation, MuxTape’s Justin explains that in his dealings he learned exactly how savvy the major labels were to what’s going on online and how interested they are in participating in the free exchange and promotion of digital music.

To me, though, this behavior exhibited by the labels doesn’t seem to be very forward thinking in the least, and while I understand how it’s in MuxTape’s best interest to be diplomatic with exactly how hard they criticize the labels at this point, I don’t know anyone who can realistically describe this as anything other than the labels stupidly killing the geese who lay golden eggs.

Towards the end of Justin’s post, he describes his vision for the resurrected version of MuxTape:

Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems.

The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers.

In other words, it’s going to be a lot like the re-launched music offering from MySpace.

What do we folk who want a MuxTape like service do? Well, there’s a few alternatives out there, but I still throw my full support behind the idea of grabbing an offshore hosting account somewhere and installing a copy of OpenTape.

It’s a virtual carbon copy of MuxTape, without the legal hassles. It’s not free for the hosting account, obviously, but for those wishing to easily share a mixtape with their friends in the style MuxTape offered, it’s one of the last few alternatives left.

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What? Noooo! Muxtape Has Been Shut Down By The RIAA

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:30:37 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Lately, I’ve become a big fan of the simple online mixtape creation tool Muxtape. I’ve always loved creating mixtapes for friends and this tool was the best solution out there; recently, it became so popular that several tools like Muxtape Stumbler have been built around it.

Unfortunately, I doubt we’ll be having much more fun with Muxtape in the future, as the site now sports only the following message:

Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.

It sounds optimistic, but things rarely turn out that way. Muxtape will probably argue that they cannot control if their users have rights to upload music to the service, but let’s face it, basically no one except the record companies have the right to upload 99.9% of any available music anywhere, and RIAA will simply point that out.

Fair enough, but the other side of the coin says that it’s nearly impossible for any startup to legally set up a service that has anything to do with copyrighted music, and therefore most of them (Pandora and Muxtape are two recent examples) will die out in the end, as soon as RIAA and similar entities start perceiving them as a threat. Is that a good thing for the users, music or musicians in general?

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Texas Court Tells RIAA it Can Claim Damages, But Less Than it Wants

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:35:03 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Say you were to step back in time, to the moment before you were aware that copying and sharing music, either through tangible media or virtual transfer, was illegal - and could be a crime prosecutable with steep fines and perhaps even a jail term (if you happened to be convicted of particularly heavy violations). Would you prefer to see damages conditioned to fit considerably less intense profile? One described as “innocent infringement,” perhaps? That’s what the defendant in Maverick v. Harper is hoping to realize.

The case takes place in San Antonio court, and involves what originally was a 16 year old girl (now college age), who admitted to copyright infringement but has sought “‘innocent infringer’ status,” according to Ray Beckerman of the website Recording Industry vs The People.

The RIAA, according to Beckerman, aimed for summary judgment in light of the defendant’s plea of ignorance about her transgression(s). But interestingly enough, the court has “denied the RIAA’s motion…unless (it) agrees to accept $200 per infringement.”

That number is rather meaningful, actually. The court details its position thusly:

The damages provision of the Copyright Act provides that a plaintiff may elect to seek

minimum damages of $750 per work. 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(1). However, it also provides that “where the infringer . . . was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.” 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2). The defendant has the burden to prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement.

The court then explained the defendants stated position on the matter:

Defendant admitted that she owned compact discs. However, both in her affidavit and in her deposition, Defendant claimed that she believed using KaZaA and similar products to be akin to listening to radio over the internet and did not know that the Recordings were being either downloaded or distributed. She further claimed that prior to this lawsuit, she did not have any understanding of copyright infringement.

Insofar as the defendant’s need to “prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement,” the court had this to say:

At the summary judgment stage, all factual disputes must be construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party—in this case, Defendant. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255. Defendant has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that her actions constituted innocent infringement. 17 U.S.C. § 502(c)(2). Plaintiffs have not introduced any evidence to contradict that Defendant did not have an understanding of the nature of file-sharing programs and copyright sophisticated enough to have reason to know that her actions infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights. Therefore, the Court finds that a fact issue exists as to whether Defendant was an innocent infringer.

There you have it. A lesser charge for the defendant, it seems. But I must say, even with the -$550 “voucher” put up by the court, $200 per work still puzzles me. If we’re to take $0.99 as the generally accepted price for a digital music track today, a 2,000% premium is peculiarly high for an infraction. Yes, the real damages to the RIAA could be quite high, given the amount of illegal proliferation of music on the Web. But one could perhaps just as convincingly argue the opposite. That they are not so high on an individual basis. As it goes in the peer-to-peer realm, the number of seeders, like leechers, is high. Given the fact that there is room for “doubt,” as it were, at least in a legal sense, damages could do with a major decrease. All the more so if a defendant is judged an “innocent infringer.”

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Music Industry Turns to Ad-supported Downloads — in China

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:31:45 +0000

Source:Mashable!

This is the second of two posts written by Dr. Mark Drapeau about government 2.0. Click here to read his first post, “Government 2.0: An Insider’s Perspective.”

In June 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’ investigative arm, released a report stating that, “more than 4 years after September 11, the nation still lacked the government-wide policies and processes called for in law to provide a framework for guiding and integrating a myriad of ongoing efforts to share terrorism-related information critical to protecting our homeland.”

Simply put, people in the government aren’t talking to each other enough. As one person, I cannot pretend to solve this problem, nor even understand all of the issues involved. And understandably, the details of some of the workings of government are shielded from public consumption. But for our purposes here, I ask a slightly different question: Given that governments are inherently reactive, rather than proactive (I need give no examples), how can this be compatible with the rapidly evolving world of social software?

In what I think is a good trend, people associated with the government are using Web 2.0 (whether they know it or not). Increasingly, senior officials in the national security community have LinkedIn accounts and curiously dip their toes in the Facebook and Twitter waters, if only because they hear about these sites from their daughters or research assistants. The only way to truly understand the power of Web 2.0 is to participate in it, and even the smallest foray should be applauded.

Ironically, however, many government agencies block such sites for use at work. For example, I cannot access MySpace or YouTube from the computer in my office at the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) blocks most social networking sites besides LinkedIn. At least one part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) blocks Google Chat. Not only do these policies make little sense (there are legitimate research uses for all of these sites, while email, iTunes, and non-blocked websites are ‘abused’ daily), the policies are inconsistent.

Despite this, there are overt sprinklings of Web 2.0 influence all over the federal government. For example, in mid-2007, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sponsored a public blog about pandemic influenza, which I contributed to due to my work on global health security. This was a great early example of a government agency engaging with an interested, and in many cases, expert audience.

Contemporary government blogs include very solid efforts by two agencies that people love to hate: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the U.S. Postal Service – the latter of which is a very creative effort. NASA has multiple Twitter-streams in the realm of micro-blogging, and they utilize YouTube and other new media to publicize their exciting work. More budding efforts abound.

There are also promising extra-governmental efforts. Perhaps most notable among them, GovLoop was built using Ning and in only seven weeks has attracted over 500 users from federal, state, and local governments. There was also an event entitled Social Media in Government, with the goal of the conference to “capture the power of social media in your organization, along with helpful tools, tips and techniques to get started.” Activities like these are already making it easier for public servants to share ideas and knowledge.

At a recent Washington, DC-area conference entitled ”Defense 2.0,” Opening Keynote speaker Michael Nelson pointed out that the Internet has ceased to be a tool, and has evolved into a place. And Marketing 101 teaches that you want to be in the places where your target audience is. For the government, whether interested in recruiting employees, talking to subject-matter experts, or collecting counter-terrorism intelligence, using “rich media” to participate in discussions on the Internet and get people to engage with their “brand” will be increasingly important.

But Defense 2.0 is still in its infancy, with a large gap between vision and reality. Thus far, Web 2.0 efforts, while some of them are very promising (for example, Intellipedia), have mainly occurred in isolation, with lack of coordination and no overall Government 2.0 theory, strategy, or framework for using these new social tools to best serve the American people. Here, I begin to describe the beginnings of such a framework.

Mainstream media coverage of the national security community largely involves “guns and ammo,” but increasingly U.S. armed forces leverage the power of other elements of government including diplomatic, intelligence, and economic components to conduct complex, “low-intensity” operations that involve far more than combat. These efforts also regularly involve groups outside the federal government, whether they are state and local responders, military forces of other nations, or global non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

“It’s the notion of unity of effort without unity of control,” says Dr. Linton Wells II, who has a background in the Navy, previously acted as the CIO of the entire U.S. military apparatus, and is now heavily involved with efforts to provide “transportable infrastructures” including inexpensive communications technologies to disaster-relief zones (see STAR-TIDES, below).

Because modern governments now think about military missions for national security in a much broader context, opportunities to use social software can best be divided into three very broad – and diverse – arenas. They are: (1) government internal information sharing, (2) creating and nurturing relationships with non-governmental entities, and (3) empowering people, particularly those in post-disaster, post-war, or impoverished situations. Understanding the pros and cons of incorporating Web 2.0 tools into each of these circumstances is the goal of a research project I have started at the National Defense University called Social Software for Security, or S3.

Internal governmental information sharing means different things to different people. The most commonly-stated objection to the incorporation of social software into national security operations is that malware could be implanted or the social tools could otherwise provide access into government systems, thereby reducing network integrity. However, a good deal of government information, while perhaps private, is not necessarily so much so that off-the-shelf Web 2.0 sites cannot be utilized – they do typically come with some security features.

Examples of such “less secure” information exchanges include Office Directors polling staffs about coordinating schedules or planning social events, Naval Postgraduate School students using iPods with audio/video to supplement lectures, Public Affairs monitoring media feeds about topics of interest, or Human Resources bringing soldiers’ families together using social networks that provide information about local areas. Paraphrasing what Maverick might say about this information, “If I told you, I would not have to kill you.”

In the realm of developing and nurturing a social network of government employees and non-governmental entities, social software also has numerous applications. Sites like kluster can enhance communication and not only help to promote organization within an amorphous and changing coalition, but also help groups discuss problems and arrive at actionable conclusions. Some very important entities, like the Defense Science Board and the Highlands Forum, involve groups of subject matter experts from inside and outside government interacting in various ad hoc ways to solve challenging problems in national security.

A global social network along these same lines is called STAR-TIDES, or Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research – Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. STAR-TIDES is a network of governmental, non-profit, academic, and other individuals dedicated to providing low-cost, transportable infrastructure for post-disaster, impoverished, or post-war individuals; including cheap mobile communications technologies.

In the social software space, STAR-TIDES has a Twitter stream detailing conferences attended, sponsored events, daily meetings, and the like. The network may also begin using sites like kluster or DeepDebate to go through an organized, collaborative decision-making process to arrive at actionable conclusions.

Finally, STAR-TIDES is utilizing mashups in their humanitarian efforts. One, constructed by InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters), is called Contacts Nearby. This program interfaces your Facebook biography with Google Maps (geographical information) and Twitter (archivable communications), allowing (say) a refugee to read about, geo-locate, and chat with a U.S. Marine unit, members of an Africa-based NGO, and other refugees with recycled, donated mobile phones. There is now similar software for the new iPhone which concentrates mainly on tagging and auto-tagging geo-located photographic information using mashups with other programs like your Google Calendar. All of these data can then be shared on blogs, wikis, and other social sites.

Related to this, online social communication – particularly scalable micro-blogs like Twitter – can also behave as an “early warning system” to rapidly detect natural disasters, and even localize their origins. As someone who researches the connection between infectious disease and international security, I have been thinking about its uses in the event of a pandemic outbreak. Could Twitter power users like Robert Scoble help to disseminate information on government posters like the one I recently created?

In the end, diverse missions will require differing social software. Many novice end users will probably know their mission requirements, but will not know which Web 2.0 tools are the best fit. As a first step towards helping such users, my Social Software for Security project has funded an effort by Desarae Veit to catalog more than 1,000 social networking sites and describe their properties that may be of use in government and humanitarian efforts – like whether they are mobile-enabled, if they are high or low bandwidth, if they are free to use, and so forth.

This information has now been incorporated into a public website that we have named Sniki, for Social Networking Wiki. To my knowledge, such a public, interactive database has not heretofore existed. I’m happy that the National Defense University could help to provide this resource to the Web 2.0 community, and in the spirit of social software I encourage you all to register on the site, edit it, and consider it yours!

Dr. Mark Drapeau is the 2006-2008 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security policy of the National Defense University in Washington. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. He can be reached at mark.d.drapeau@ugov.gov via email.

Source:Mashable!

Google on Wednesday announced that it has launched a music search service in China that allows users to access music legally online through its new service called Music Onebox. According to the company, the service is backed by some record labels and will be supported by advertising revenue.

As the AP points out, paid music downloads in China are “practically nonexistent.” According to most estimates, more than 99 percent of all downloaded files in China are pirated and legitimate sales represent less than 1 percent of the world’s total music revenue, reaching just $76 million.

Each time someone uses Google’s Music Onebox to find a song, they’re redirected to Top100.cn, which will offer them the opportunity to download the track for free. The record labels will then incur the revenue coming from the advertising on the site.

There’s no way to tell if this new model will help curb piracy in China and record labels are more than a little hesitant to allow people to download songs and rely on advertising to turn a profit, but it’s the first step in the right direction that could see them come around and start trusting the Web a bit more.

That said, this will never come to the United States. Let’s face it – iTunes is the world’s largest music retailer and people seem to be more than happy buying music that’s littered with DRM. Realizing that, why would the music industry want to bring an ad-supported downloading business to US shores? It wouldn’t make any sense.

The only reason record labels have agreed to stand behind Top100.cn is because they know they’re losing loads of cash in China as each day passes and more people pirate music. Piracy isn’t just a problem in China, it’s so commonplace that hardly anyone knows someone that downloads songs legally. Can the same be said for the US where the RIAA is trying its best to crackdown on the small percentage of pirates? I didn’t think so.

Top100.cn is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at making the Chinese turn to legitimate sources of music and curb piracy in the country. If that ever happens, this service will die and the music industry will try to force DRM on every Chinese person, much like they do with the Western world today.

And as much as I would like to see a service like this in the US and abroad, it just won’t happen.

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