Yahoo has launched its digital music service, a new fashion in the music field and will further promote the service, according to Li Rui, general manager of Yahoo! China's search business division, in an interview with International Finance News on January 24.

After Yahoo China joined force with Hurray! Holding Co., Ltd., a leader in digital music production and distribution, the two released the first EP, "Jane -- Love" from the "Super Girl", Zhang Liangying.

After the song was released on Yahoo.com for two weeks, tens of millions of netizens have tried the song and it has been downloaded for 200,000 times by paid netizens.

According to Li, Yahoo will continue to cooperate with Hurray and consider collaborating with other music companies for the promotion of digital music.

Compared with digital music online distribution, traditional music distribution is much slower, said Li.

According to international practice, music companies will usually reserve the copyrights of new songs for some time before they release them, eager fans have to pay higher price in order to get them. When the songs are not as popular as they used to be a couple of months later, music companies can transfer the copyrights to MP3 websites or put them up on their own websites for free downloading.

While in the era when music consumption becomes more digitized, consumers can enjoy paid music by logging on Internet, said the manager.

In traditional music era, consumers will have to buy one whole CD disc, which contains dozens of songs, while some consumers only need one or several songs, digital music gives consumers more choices, said Li.

On Yahoo, netizens can try the "Jane -- Love" for two minutes then decide whether they want to buy or not, what is more, price for one song is much cheaper compared with a whole CD disc.

"In order to ensure the success of online sale, we adopted a new kind of confidential technology, which can efficiently prevent piracy", said Li when asked about online copyrights infringement.

Digital music distribution will be a trend in the future as MP3, MP4 and other digital music devices become more and more popular, while CD disc may turn into a luxury in the future, said Li.

By People's Daily Online