Chinese site to steer users to legit music source

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A music service that plans to offer free song downloads said Monday that China's largest search engine will send users to the service in a deal that could cut online music piracy.

The free service, Qtrax, has licensing deals with all the major recording companies and their publishing units. The company plans to fund its royalty payments to artists and the music industry through advertising.

Qtrax launches Thursday in Australia and New Zealand, which amounts to a world debut after several aborted launches and a 90-day U.S. preview in April.

The service is scheduled to begin in China on Dec. 17. Under the deal announced Monday, users of some entertainment and music pages operated by China's leading search engine, Baidu.com, will see a button allowing a download from Qtrax when they search for a song or artist that is in Qtrax's catalog. If users follow through, an advertisement will appear on the music-playing software that transfers the song.

While the deal does not cover searches from Baidu's main page, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz said he was told by Baidu that the offshoot sites generate millions of daily visits, "which is exciting enough for us."

Qtrax also has plans to launch in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan this year, then the U.K. in February and the U.S. in the first quarter of 2010, Klepfisz said.

It remains to be seen how well its business model will work. Qtrax must pay royalties each time a song is played, but it gets revenue only on advertisements shown when a user is downloading a song or transferring it to a portable media player. The company has resisted putting audio ads in the song files themselves.

— Ryan Nakashima, AP Business Writer.

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Best Buy embraces digital delivery of home video

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Best Buy Co. is trying to nudge consumers away from its stores' DVD aisles by making it easier for them to rent and buy movies over high-speed Internet connections.

The largest U.S. retailer of consumer electronics is setting up its digital delivery service in partnership with CinemaNow, which has deals with the major movie studios.

The software making it possible to shop CinemaNow's video library will be included on all the Web-connected devices sold in Best Buy's more than 1,000 U.S. stores. That means consumers who buy flat-panel TVs, Blu-ray players, personal computers and mobile phones from Best Buy would be able to get downloads of videos the same day they are released on DVDs.

The alliance marks the latest step away from the DVD format. Consumers are getting more ways of finding home entertainment with just a few clicks instead of traveling to a video rental store or waiting for a disc to be delivered through the mail.

Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. all have been winning over consumers with their own digital delivery systems. Blockbuster Inc. also has a deal with CinemaNow that lets people rent movies over the Internet.

Netflix gave an indication of the growing popularity of new video-delivery methods in its earnings report last month. It said that 42 percent of its subscribers streamed at least 15 minutes of video through its Internet-viewing service during the last quarter, up from 22 percent at the same time last year.

— Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer.

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Study: Internet use leads to more diverse networks

NEW YORK (AP) — A new study confirms what your 130 Facebook friends and scores of Twitter followers may have already told you: The Internet and mobile phones are not linked to social isolation.

Online activities such as e-mail, blogging and frequenting Internet hangouts can even lead to larger, more diverse social networks, according to the study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The study refutes research earlier in the decade suggesting that people's growing embrace of technology has come at the expense of close human connections.

"Social isolation has not changed that much since 1985," said Keith Hampton, the main author of the study professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. This means that very few adults — 6 percent of the population — say they have no one to talk to about important matters in their lives.

The 2008 survey of 2,512 adults did find that Americans' core discussion networks — that group of people you count on being able to confide in — has gotten smaller in the past two decades. It's down, on average, to about two people instead of three. They've also become less diverse because they contain fewer friends and more family members.

This trend, however, was not linked to the use technology. It's not the Internet's fault you have fewer good friends.

The Internet also hasn't pulled people away from public places like parks, cafes and restaurants — just the opposite.

The study, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points and accounted for differences because of age, education and other factors, also found that people now tend to use cell phones more than landlines to stay in touch with closest family and friends.

In fact, people now text these close friends and family members as much as they use traditional landline phones, about 125 days out of the year.

Face-to-face contact is still the primary way people keep in touch. The average person sees each member in their close group of confidants 210 days out of the year. If they have a cell phone, they call each person in that group on 195 days.

Another interesting tidbit: Users of social networking Web sites are 40 percent more likely to visit a bar, but 36 percent less likely to visit a religious institution than those who shun Facebook, MySpace and the like.

— Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer