In the world where everything gets copyrighted and most of the copyrighted material gets copied, Google has boldly launched a service providing free legal music downloads in world’s largest populated country, China. This service of Google China will bring free downloads of licensed songs to people in China via its search engine.
Google currently offers over 350,000 songs from Chinese and foreign artists signed by Sony Music, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music. Lee Kai-Fu, the president of Chinese version of Google, said that a reason why Google lagged in the country’s search market was that it did not offer music downloads as offered by its trail leader Baidu.com. With this new service offered by Google China, Google hopes to increase its market share in country’s search market. As of now, Baidu.com holds more than 60% market share of China’s search engine market, more than double what Google holds.
The service has been made legal and free because Google will split advertising revenues with Sony Music, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music. This will help keep the service free and the companies will also be at no loss. Indeed, a good way of making something free legally.
People who are residing in China and are on Chinese internet connection can download songs by visiting the link here. However, those who are not connected to internet via Chinese internet connection are not allowed to download songs.
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Google China offers Free Legal Music Downloads in China – http://tinyurl.com/dkl6r7
good for Chinese but what about we US citizens. Since Google controls US search engine market, I do not think it will ever develop music search engine for us. But we would love to have one.
Yeah, ain’t that the truth!
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