【英语科技】巨鲸音乐网不再只依赖谷歌

Life after Google's decision to stop censoring its Chinese search results has prompted some adjustments for its Chinese digital music partner, Orca Digital.

The search giant now has permission from authorities to link Chinese users to an uncensored version of its site in Hong Kong, but its China operations are still at the discretion of the government, a fact which continues to cast uncertainty over its businesses and partnerships here.

Orca Digital Chief Executive Gary Chen said the company, which runs a free, ad-supported music downloading and streaming service in partnership with Google, saw a dip in traffic a few months after Google began automatically redirecting Chinese visitors to Google.com.hk in March. But the decrease wasn't significant--just about 5%--Chen said, and the company is now serving 7 million to 8 million downloads and streams a day.

Orca Digital's Top100.cn is the only website in the world that has permission from the top four music labels to give away free MP3s without copy protection. It earned those rights, and attracted its first advertisers, largely thanks to its partnership with Google. For the past three to four months, however, the company has had to take over most of its own ad sales, Chen said.

'We're not doing too badly on our own, especially considering we have only four sales people at the moment,' Chen said. The company, which recently added Intel to its list of advertisers without Google's hands-on help, will be expanding its sales team to 30 people.

In the meantime, Google has increased its investment in Top100, and NBA player Yao Ming, one of the original stakeholders in the company, has also raised his investment. Top100 raised several million dollars altogether, but Chen declined to disclose the exact amount.

The company may bring on an additional investor by the end of the year, he added, and it is exploring other products in addition to the music search page on Google's Chinese website, such as wireless applications for Google's mobile operating system, Android.

Top100 will have its own branded app with a basic service users can use to listen to free music, and additional premium services. Orca Digital will also make its database of music available to software developers to encourage the creation of more creative applications.

Though Top100 has rights to provide free downloads only in China, Chen said the company may be able to offer mobile subscription services in other markets. Details on what the subscriptions will include and what they will cost have yet to be decided, but Chen expects them to be the primary source of revenue for the company's mobile services, rather than advertising.

Top100, which also works with Chinese social-networking sites to provide playlist-sharing services, now has 3.15 million tracks available for streaming and downloading on the web, and continues to add to its database. Chen expects that by the end of next year, the database will surpass the number of songs on Apple's iTunes, which doesn't have a base in China.

在谷歌公司(Google)决定停止审查其中国网站的搜索结果后，它在中国的数字音乐合作伙伴巨鲸音乐网络技术有限责任公司(Orca Digital)也相应做出了一些调整。

Associated Press姚明和谷歌都增加了对巨鲸音乐网的投资虽然中国政府现在允许谷歌将其中国用户链接到其香港网站一个不审查搜索内容的网页上，但谷歌的中国业务仍处在只能听由政府处置的境地，这一局面使谷歌在华的业务与合作伙伴关系继续面临着不确定性。

巨鲸音乐网的首席执行长陈戈(Gary Chen)说，自从谷歌今年3月开始将其中国网站的用户自动转至其香港网站Google.com.hk后，巨鲸音乐网的流量这几个月来出现了下降。巨鲸音乐网与谷歌合作经营着免费的音乐下载和试听服务，服务的成本由广告费负担。但陈戈说，流量下降得并不严重，只减少了5%，巨鲸音乐网现在每天的下载和试听点击次数达700万至800万次。

巨鲸音乐网络技术有限责任公司的巨鲸音乐网(Top100.cn)是全球唯一获世界四大唱片公司允许免费提供无版权保护MP3音乐的网站。它之所以能获得这一授权，并吸引到第一批广告客户，很大程度上应归功于其与谷歌的合作关系。但陈戈说，过去三、四个月，该公司不得不自己承担起大部分广告销售工作。

陈戈说，我们凭自己之力干得还不错，特别是考虑到我们目前只有四名销售人员。巨鲸音乐网最近在没有谷歌帮助的情况下将英特尔公司(Intel)发展成了广告客户，该公司将把其销售团队增加到30人。

而谷歌与此同时也增加了在巨鲸音乐网的投资，原本就持有其股份的NBA球星姚明还增加了持股。巨鲸音乐网一下子就募集了数百万美元资金，但陈戈拒绝透露具体的资金额。

陈戈还说，巨鲸音乐网络技术有限责任公司今年年底前可能会增加一位投资者，除了在谷歌中国网站提供音乐搜索网页外，该公司还在探索推出其他产品，如使用谷歌手机操作系统Android的无线应用服务。

巨鲸音乐网将推出使用自己牌子的应用软件，它除了可供用户免费听音乐外，另有收费服务。该公司还将把自己的音乐数据库提供给软件开发商，以鼓励他们开发更多有创意的应用软件。

虽然巨鲸音乐网只有权在中国境内提供免费的音乐下载服务，但陈戈说，该公司或许可以在其他市场提供手机订阅服务。虽然可订阅的内容及其成本方面的细节尚未制定出来，但陈戈预计，这一服务，而非广告，将成为该公司手机服务的主要收入来源。

巨鲸音乐网还与中国的一些社交网站进行合作，提供播放列表分享服务，它目前在网上有315万首音乐作品可供试听和下载，且这一数据库的规模还在扩大。陈戈预计，到明年底，该数据库收录的歌曲将超过苹果公司(Apple)网店iTunes的歌曲收录量。iTunes目前在中国尚无立足点。