The ruling against the IFPI appeared to be a huge blow against advocates of stronger intellectual property protection in China; but some observers have suggested that rather than proving that the Chinese courts are not sympathetic to copyright concerns, it instead suggests that the IFPI failed to bring a proper case.

This latest ruling in favour of a local music publisher certainly indicates that music rights owners in China can be heard; and it’s not the first time that Baidu has been slapped down by the courts. In 2005  Shanghai Busheng Music Culture Media Company, an affiliate of EMI, won an infringement case against Baidu’s MP3 Search feature. However, at the time press reports suggested that the MP3 Search feature may be disabled as a result, but Baidu continued regardless. It’s not yet clear whether this latest legal ruling will have any discernable effect on the search engine’s claim that linking to content is fine; or whether it marks a small but significant turning point in the way the Chinese courts are prepared to back rightsholders.

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all,” writes SVP of corporate development and chief legal officer David Drummond. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Why are we writing about this? Last year, Google launched a free ad-supported music downloads service in China. It was hailed for its piracy-deflating potential, not to mention the contrast between it and local search engine Baidu, which has provoked anger in the music industry by deep-linking to copyrighted songs in the past.

Don’t get us wrong: this is much bigger than music. Google squaring up to the Chinese government will be welcomed around the world – its original decision to censor search engine results there has been criticised often. But it will be interesting to see what the knock-on effects are at a time when the Chinese government is also trying to make the country more hospitable for legal music services.

The Beggars catalogue will be made available digitally through wa3.cn for online subscription and mobile distribution, while physical releases will go out through local labels Jingwen and Hi-Note. Beggars artist British Sea Power will be playing Hong Kong, Taiwan and Beijing as part of the expansion this October.

“We’ve witnessed there’s a vibrant music scene within China and awareness of Western music is developing fast, so it’ll be a challenging market for us to work in,” says Beggars Group’s Simon Wheeler. It’s a good time to be looking at China, since the government there has just announced plans to crack down on online music piracy, including search engines providing links to illegal downloads.

As Spotify becomes more and more of a household name, stories about the company which are only half-true can spread like wildfire. Yet this time, it seems Spotify has been almost Apple-like in its ability to keep this under wraps; and the company is still being incredibly tight-lipped about its plans. Music Ally has spoken to a well-placed source in China who is similarly surprised about the news.

Spotify has become a huge success in several European markets, where users love suddenly having access to totally free streaming music on demand. But Chinese internet users have been used to this for years; and now with Google’s music service sanctioned by the labels in China it seems that free streams are now fully entrenched in the country. As this article points out - “Tencent, Sina, Baidu and three main telecom operators including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all have their own music online streaming portals already.”

In addition Chinese music fans demand Chinese music. Surely prioritising a US launch would have made more sense?  West was certainly the direction most people expected the company would travel, particularly after announcing yesterday the hiring of Faisal Galaria (previously international managing director of travel site Kayak.com and before that a European director at Skype) to set up a global business development team.  “I am passionate about building disruptive companies”, saysFaisal on the company blog. “Spotify is changing the way we all enjoy music and the old paradigms of music ownership. It’s going to be fun.”

It’s hard to question Spotify’s business acumen so far. Founder Daniel Ek claimed at a Music Ally panel at the Great Escape Festival this year that he’d spent just GBP £5,000 on marketing so far. Perhaps, then, with a little more marketing it’s possible to conquer China.

The key, for Spotify, has always been unlocking advertising revenue – particularly in China where the premium subscription model won’t fly. And on that basis the partner TOM is a good choice: the company runs a massively popular online entertainment portal, and also provides an online advertising platform in China.

We’ll keep you posted as more details come to light.

It’s launched with 350,000 songs from artists on all four major labels, with plans to expand the catalogue to over 1.1 million this year. Google is sharing advertising revenues from the service with the labels, and working with Chinese music site Top100.cn to run it.

Google hopes to gain ground on local search rival Baidu, while the labels hope it’ll attract Chinese consumers away from illegal download sites.

IFPI boss John Kennedy has already hailed the move, describing it as “fantastic news” and “the perfect marriage between first-class technology and creative talent to produce a great product”.

There are no plans at present to expand the service beyond China.

It points out that thousands of these hacked vouchers are for sale on Chinese online shopping site Taobao, where users are paying the hackers to generate codes for them to sell.

Apparently six months ago, a $200 card went for around 320 RMB (roughly $47), but the price has since plummeted to around 18 RMB ($2.60) as more sellers pile in. “But we make more money as the amount of customers is growing rapidly,” one tells Outdustry.

As Apple reportedly prepares to launch its iPhone in China, the news is sure to cause concern within the company – especially if these hacked voucher codes start being sold in the West too.