Universal Music Group and Apple have joined together to make popular Chinese music available for download for the U.S. iTunes Music Store. The press release says that this is the first time Chinese music has been available for legal download outside of Asia. It also says that over 1000 tracks will be available for download in time for the beginning of Chinese New Year celebrations.
I was very excited when I first heard about this. I took a look at the available offerings on iTunes last night and must say that my initial excitement was met with disappointment. The songs are located in a Chinese New Year section of World music. Last night there were 37 albums available, most $9.99 to download the complete album. This sounds good until you notice that most of the music is very old. Most of the music is from the mid ’80s and ’90s. And there were no where near 1000 tracks for download. In the end, I bought about 10 tracks which I will be playing at work today to celebrate the new year.
I can only hope that there will be more recent music available. And eventually, I’d like to see Japanese and Korean music there as well. I guess this is a good start though.
Gung hay fa choi! Happy New Year!