Music in China Business Model: Life Without Oxygen Possible?

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NASA discovered that life can exist even without the 6 building blocks that were presumed crucial; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur, read here. In the same vain the music industry thought for a long time that their only way of survival was selling songs. But the digital revolution sucked this oxygen out of their business model. Good news for them is that life can still exist, even without seeming crucial building blocks. If paying for songs does not work anymore, it can be substituted with free songs plus advertising on the side. Just as some life can exist without oxygen, and as NASA just found out even without phosporous if it is substituted by arsenic.

Top100.cn is trying to survive in the most "toxic" (because hardly any customer wants to pay for songs) and competitive (Baidu is its formidable competitor) business environments in the world.

Top100.cn is also experimenting with charging for:

• selection of music, with recommendations and links;
• a subscription for cloud service, so that you can access music on different devices.

In Spock's words: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it." The music industry could take an example to the astrobiologists who now realise that their search should be much more comprehensive in order to achieve their goal.

Read The Economist article here.

Thank you Mikołaj Rogowski, former guest columnist of IP Dragon, for pointing to the Economist aricle and Hans Klaufus to the NASA press release.