Google Launches Free Music Downloads in China

Today, Google launched a free, licensed music download service exclusively in China. The plan is to share advertising revenue with major music labels, instead of banking on CD sales, while providing a music download feature for Google in the Chinese mainland.

Google has been behind Baidu.com in the Chinese online search market for years. Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said the reason was that Google didn’t offer music downloads, he told reporters that:

“We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads. We were missing one piece … we didn’t have music.”

Right now, 350,000 songs are available on the service, from Chinese and foreign artists. And Gary Chen, chief executive of Google’s partner www.Top100.cn, said that 1.1 million songs will be offered in the coming months.

All the major labels have a stake in the new service, and Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia Pacific and Asia chairman of the IFPI, said that “this is the first serious attempt to start the online market in China. I can’t overestimate how important this is.”

The search function allows for users to not only search for a song or artist, but also define the “level of beat” or “instrumentality” they want in a song. The new service will purportedly lure users away from illegal download sites because the music quality will be higher.

As there are no plans to extend the service outside of China, those who wish to download free music in other countries must resort to legally gray workarounds. When will this type of free service be available to the rest of the world?

Photo via google-kai.com
Source: Reuters