Google Launches Free Music Service in China

In an attempt to compete with Chinese search monster Baidu, Google.cn has launched a music tool that will allow the Chinese to search music that is free and 100 percent legal to distribute.

Baidu has long been a thorn in Google’s side when it comes to dominating internet searching in China. Many people the world over don’t know what they’d do without Google and the thought of switching from Google over to some of it’s less popular successors doesn’t bear thinking about. However, it seems the Chinese are quite happy with the service Baidu provides.

Baidu is a successful search engine offering an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files but really, it’s those 10 million multimedia files that drags in a large chunk of the users. Most of the links to downloadable MP3s are illegal but Baidu claims that its actions are completely innocuous. The search engine says that under Chinese law, linking to these files is not illegal.

While Baidu has recently come under fire from various different record companies from the links it provides to users, Google is set to launch its own music search site located at www.google.cn/music. Users in China can use Music Onebox to search music that’s listed on top100.cn.

The site has financial backing from Houston Rockets player, Yao Ming and Google told Ars Technica that it won’t see any of the revenue from the Music Onebox.

“Google does not share in the revenue generated by advertising in connection with its Music Onebox product in China. All ads visible on the product in connection with the product run on Top100’s website and revenues from those ads are shared between Top100 and its music label and publisher partners."

This is a huge step for steadying the piracy/online distribution boat and it’ll be interesting to see how successful Music Onebox turns out to be. Word on the street is the Google service is limited in the music it offers, which is a result of top100.cn not having the licensing rights to a lot of music, if Baidu goes down in a sea of copyright suits then Music Onebox might be all users have left.

(Via Ars Technica)