Baidu’s Free Chinese Music Download

Baidu  (pronounced like BAY-doo in English), China’s largest search engine has long been criticized for offering an Chinese MP3 music search that provides links to pirated music hosted on third-party sites. On May 2011 Baidu took a major step to address the piracy concerns surrounding its music services. Baidu has announced that it has reached a deal with three major music labels ( Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music ) to offer free and legal mp3 music for download and streaming to its users.

Baidu announced it would start paying an agency representing songwriters for every chinese music download on its MP3-music search site. The move comes amid a crackdown on intellectual property rights violations which the Chinese government started in October 2010 and led to the shutdown of many websites offering pirated music and films.  The payment would however only go toward compensating the songwriters of the music lyrics, but not any major record labels, Baidu said.

The new service Baidu free download is called Ting, which means “listen” in English. Ting is chinese social music site, through this site the songs will be available for free to members. In return, it will remove all links to pirated music from its search results and pay for the music it offers as well as pay a cut-out of the advertising revenue, if it exceeds a certain amount. Baidu Ting actually reminds me of Apple’s Ping. They are different, but both focus on the same thing, a social network built around the music.

Ting-social music site, through this site the songs will be available for free download

Baidu is not the first to provide a free mp3-music service in China.

Baidu’s rival Google has invested in a Chinese site called Top100.cn, which has signed partnerships with music labels to provide free licensed downloads to songs. Google has been offering a free, licensed music service in China for a couple of years now. But with its search share dwindling, the Baidu Ting free music MP3 be offered directly via the search engine.

From my opinion is the key service which beat Google years ago till now. The copyright of the music? Baidu did not care about it as long as it can attract the users away from Google. Now Google is out and Baidu is no doubt dominating the search market in China, so the strategy starts changing. Baidu Free Download, Ting is launched in private test, you can still download the mp3 music for free there, but the point is that Baidu will pay for it per download. Altough Baidu says the revenue will be mainly from online ads on Ting, which sounds very interesting. The amount of copyright fee paid by Baidu is unknown, but given the huge traffic on Baidu every day, how much Baidu is going to spend on the copyright? The company did not say whether Baidu Ting would replace Baidu’s MP3 service.

So how Baidu is going to drive millions of users from chinese mp3 search to Ting will be a big question?

The chinese music mp3 Baidu Free Download is still there