Google, the search engine giant, has just launched a music search site in China in partnership with Top100.cn, a leading music website in China co-founded by the basketball star Yao Ming. The music search site let’s users search a song by singer, name or album title and then download the song for free. Of course, the media content is licensed, free and only available to users from China.
Google, which apparently has only 26% market share in China, has tied-up with Top100.cn for the content delivery and will split ad-revenues with Top100 and the music labels. However, the announcements did not specify which music labels were onboard. Such a service from Google was speculated back in February, and major music labels including Universal, Sony and EMI were onboard back then.
Google’s major competitor in China, Baidu, which happens to hold 70 percent of the Chinese search market, and other similar sites had already been sued in the controversial Chinese internet market for illegally linking to download sites in their search results. Reports suggest that these searches for MP3 comprise of 30 percent of Baidu’s traffic. Google is trying to be safe by partnering with these music labels.
Google China’s President, Kai-fu says:
The Internet industry should by no means stand in the opposite camp against the music industry. Google always believes profoundly that mutual interest, rather than monopoly, is the key to sustainable growth.
China is the world’s largest internet market in terms of number of users. The industry has been fighting against the piracy in the market for a long time now. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry estimates that almost 99% of all music files distributed in China are pirated. Now that’s an remarkable amount of pirated content.
Interestingly, there are reports that Google has also invested in the second round of funding for Top100.cn. However, the exact figure of the investment is not yet known. The site’s first round of funding, which occurred in 2005, brought $3 million from basketball star Yao Ming and others.
what next.
Quote Google China President Kai-fu Lee: “The Internet industry should by no means stand in the opposite camp against the music industry,”
Our vision: Take the Darwinist approach; adapt and you will survive.
So instead of resisting change and become extinct you want to embrace change. People are going to share music, so give them something to share!
(TribeofNoise.com)