"China is an interesting market. It has a huge population," said Chen. "As
long as there's a need, a technology upgrade can be realized in a short period
since the per capita cost is low."
The need might very well depend on the affordability of legal downloads.
Currently, 1 yuan per song seems to be the norm for a la carte downloads. A8
halves the price for some songs to attract buyers, though most are still sold at
1 to 2 yuan apiece.
ChinaLabs Senior Consultant Wang Nan says 1 yuan is still high. "Many Chinese
make only several hundred yuan a month," Wang said. "If a large portion of the
population finds legal music downloads too expensive, piracy will be acceptable
among the public."
But Cheung says that 1 yuan is the lowest possible price and that the music
companies, rather, should focus on improving the quality for users.
"Copyright music can't compete with pirated music on price," he said.
"Instead, we should renovate our products to offer consumers the experience that
can't be replicated through piracy.
"For example, we can enable buyers to interact with the singers. Can piracy
websites do that?"
Copyright snags
Apart from the user-end challenges, many negotiations and compromises are
needed to firm up the alliance between the music industry and its online
distributors. Ironically, some of the copyright music distributors may
themselves be guilty of copyright infringement.
To sell a song online, a distributor has to purchase two copyrights: the
right to the sound recording and the right to the melody and accompanying
lyrics. The two rights are often the realms of different companies even though
they might bear the same recording labels.
"Heroes of Earth," for example, is available on aigomusic.com, a8.com,
9sky.com and top100.cn. Their operators have obtained permission from Sony BMG
Entertainment (China), which owns the copyright to the sound recording. But no
one has signed a deal with Sony/ATV (China), which owns copyrights to the
melodies and lyrics, according to a Sony/ATV staffer in Shanghai who identified
herself only with the surname Xie.
"They have approached us to negotiate a deal, but nothing has been signed,"
Xie said. "We've told them offering the album on their websites constitutes
copyright infringement. But so far we haven't received any response. Of course,
we haven't seen one cent of royalty."
Gary Chen, CEO of the Beijing-based top100.cn, blames it
on the chaotic status of the music publishing industry.