The Ministry of Culture, in the midst of a renewed effort to exert its influence over music distribution in China, has issued new orders requiring Chinese websites to review any music offered to users and to remove tracks that have not been approved.  According to a report published this week in the Communist Party mouthpiece newspaper People’s Daily, the ministry “demands that all search engines, portal websites, industry websites, entertainment websites and enterprise or individual websites, speedily perform self-inspection and self-correction by Feb. 28, and if they discover the website is providing Internet music products that have not undergone content examination or have not been registered, they should be immediately deleted.” The report referred to a circular from the Ministry of Culture which could not be found on its website.  It’s not immediately clear whether the new measures are aimed at piracy or censorship, or perhaps both. The Ministry of Culture “has started taking tough actions against piracy,” said Gary Chen, CEO of Orca Digital, Google’s digital music partner in China which operates the world’s first major ad-supported free music downloading service, Top100.cn. Mr. Chen said this time, they aren’t joking.  But while the ministry reportedly cited piracy as the target of its latest order, censorship may also be a goal. The ministry has said earlier measures targeting the online music market were partly aimed at addressing “the intermingling of good and bad content.”  Reports say the ministry has shut down hundreds of sites, but as of Tuesday major websites where Chinese Internet users go for music, including Baidu, Tencent and Google, were operating without noticeable interruptions.  When it first launched efforts to exert greater control over online music in 2009, the ministry said it would review all digital music distributed in China, including the lyrics of songs and proof that distributors of the music had licenses to do so. At the time, literal interpretations of the regulations suggested that the ministry might take action against websites known for publishing links to unlicensed music, but it was unclear how the ministry would enforce its rules.  The ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  The latest media reports say the ministry has a list of 100 songs that must be removed from Chinese websites, including several by Christina Alguilera, Eminem and Kylie Minogue, as well as artists from Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It’s unclear whether these songs have been deemed illegal for content reasons and must therefore be removed from all websites, or if the ministry has chosen to put a stop to distribution only of pirated versions of these songs.  The list includes Eminem’s “Talkin 2 Myself,” which mentions drug use but isn’t otherwise any more vulgar or prurient than most pop songs about internal angst, and “Closer” by Kylie Minogue, which doesn’t seem to contain objectionable lyrics at all– unless the Ministry of feels the phrase “be together all night” is too explicit a euphemism for sex.  As of Tuesday, both of these songs could be found on both Google-Top100 and Baidu’s Mp3 search. Songs performed by Taiwanese pop singer Jay Chou and Korean pop group Super Junior are also on the list, according to People’s Daily.  The majority of tracks on the list have been approved for other types of distribution such as on CDs by another Chinese agency, the General Administration of Press and Publication, or GAPP, according to a Shanghai-based copyright lawyer who requested anonymity because of sensitivity of bureaucratic infighting in China. The Ministry of Culture and GAPP have had turf battles before, including a spat over online games that resulted in the temporary suspension of World of Warcraft in China, although a new round of conflict seems unlikely in this case as companies have, so far at least, refrained from complaining about the new rules.  Top 100’s Mr. Chen said he has not heard anything about orders to take down any unapproved foreign tracks. “We are still sending tracks to [the ministry] to get approved on a daily basis,” he said.  Google did not respond to requests for comment. Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo said Baidu has been adhering to the Ministry of Culture’s content approval process and will continue to do so.  –Loretta Chao, with contributions from Owen Fletcher and Juliet Ye.
A Chinese government agency has ordered websites to delete music that hasn't been approved, but it's not clear what that means.