Streaming news!

Soghu has reached a settlement with the major record labels in in China  who had sued Sogou and its owner over the MP3 search facility it offered, which the labels said was a gateway to illegal content. Under the agreement, the labels will forget past grievances, and Sogou will become a customer, licensing music for a new streaming and download service, which will be seemingly free to the user (and therefore presumably funded by advertising). The deal echoes that reached in 2011 with another once controversial Chinese search engine, Baidu: elsewhere in streaming news, Apple's much and long mooted streaming service is taking longer than the tech giant would like to reach market because of the firm's royalty offer, with the record labels unhappy with Apple’s current royalty plans; And streaming service Pandora has announced that its revenues were up 56% for the financial year ended 31 Jan, thanks mainly to an increase in mobile revenue, though losses were nevertheless up, from $16.1 million to $38.1 million, attributed to rising content costs. Finally on streaming, O2 has launched a massive £7.3 million ad campaign for O2 Tracks, an interesting mobile-based streaming service that went online last month.