Music in China Business Model: Life Without Oxygen Possible?

6 articles to go: IP Dragon on its way to its 1000th article

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.

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Reality Imitates Fiction: China National Space Administration Logo: Half Star Trek, And Other Half ...Star Trek

Professor Susan Scafidi, the authoriy on Fashion Law (Fashion and Intellectual Property Law), author of 'Who Owns Culture?' and Counterfeit Chic sent me a great link: 'China Bootlegs Star Trek for Its Space Program' on Cool Aggregator, a site about pop-culture and strange news maintained by Valerie D'Orazio. 

Reality Imitates Fiction

It is understandable that the people of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) are inspired by science fiction show Star Trek, but the fact that the designers of the logo of CNSA forged two different Star Trek logo's (of Star Trek itself and of the imaginary United Federation of Planets) from this popular series into one, is less then decent. Then again, the creators of Star Trek probably never imagined that their creations would ever fly, in reality, into space. Unless, Star Trek will sue the CNSA for trademark infringement, that is.  Then again, they might see it as a free (interplanetary) advertisment for their science fiction show (which becomes less and less science fiction).  

After the name "Taikonaut" was coined by Chiew Lee Yih from Malaysia and later embraced by Xinhua for people who travelled in space for the Chinese space programme (to distinguish those from astronauts from the US and cosmonauts from the USSR/Russia), IP Dragon is surprised that the CNSA chose for a less than original logo. According to this Wikipedia article: "the terms "yǔhángyuán" (宇航员, "sailing personnel in universe") or "hángtiānyuán" (航天员, "sailing personnel in sky") have long been used for astronauts. The phrase "tàikōng rén" (太空人, "spaceman") is often used in Hong Kong and Taiwan." 

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