Sales from paid online music streaming and downloads in China last year more than doubled from 2005.The booming trend is expected to continue until at least 2008.

But few overseas music companies have gained a solid foothold, with piracy a major concern. Some have managed to team up with Chinese Websites to share revenue from advertisements or royalty fees.

The combined revenue by more than 4,000 Chinese Websites for their music services, excluding wireless music like ring tones for mobile phones, reached 138 million yuan (US$17 million) last year, an increase of 112 percent from 2005.

Most of them are quite small sites as the business entrance threshold is still quite low. Some sites just need to have several staff for daily maintenance of their pages. But the sites can still generate considerable traffic as most music lovers locate favorite songs through search engines.

Most overseas music firms chose to cooperate with Chinese sites or portals instead of setting up independently.

Warner Music, together with five other global music companies, is still in a lawsuit against Beijing-based search engine Baidu.com. The Chinese group is accused of piracy for allegedly providing download links to their music.

It is expected the Internet music services market this year to leap by 132 percent from last year to 320 million yuan, and reach 650 million yuan in 2008.

Source:未知