Free Legal Music Downloads: In China
by FuKdAtShHh on Mar.30, 2009, under Misc, Muzik World, Save a buck!
Downloading music is illegal, right? That’s what the Music Industry
is telling us all the time. They sue people who download music and do
everything in their might to keep up the image that music downloading
is a major crime.This is however apparently not true in China where
Google struck a deal with major players in the Music Industry – to be
precise Universal, EMI, Warner and Sony – to provide free full songs in
their search engine. About 350K songs are offered in the beginning.
That number is said to rise to 1.1 million songs in the next months
alone. The songs will feature both local Chinese artists but also
international acts.
The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search
engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music
downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the
Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of
Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so
it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is
better than fighting illegal music downloads.
Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.
Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users
who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world
cannot.
Source: gHacks
