Dakou | |||||||||||||
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Chinese | 打口 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | punched hole | ||||||||||||
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In the recording industry, a dakou (Chinese: 打口) was a type of cut-out used in China to gain access to mostly rock music recordings that would otherwise be banned due to Chinese censorship.[1]
These recordings, which were mainly shipped from the United States and Canada, were exported to China to be used as raw materials; however, they were instead sold through semi-legal markets to be listened to.[2] Although they were cut, due to how tape recorders read the reels of tape loaded in a cassette from the centre to the margin, only the last parts of recordings were lost.[3]