Selling the Sizzle Not the Steak

There's been a lot of news about new music distribution models this month. Google announced a fully developed mp3 search functionality for Chinese customers. (Screenshots are here, since the site itself seems to be down.) As the Wall Street Journal explains in "Google Aims to Crack China with Music Push," the corporation is trying to gain market share from the more popular Baidu search engine in a venture that would be capitalized by ad revenue and would promise to promote "legal" downloading with the cooperative Top100.cn music vendor.
At the same time Microsoft and Federated Media are touting the launch of CrowdFire in the United States to figure out an economic model for skimming profit from fan culture in a post-song-sale music marketing era. CrowdFire describes itself as a "celebration of live music" that is "built by you." It claims that its platform is designed for "uploading, sharing, and producing" music, as well as for "mixing, mashing, and melding." All around San Francisco, billboards trumpet the first event, OutsideLands in Golden Gate Park.
See John Battelle for more.