Staff walk past a Baidu billboard in Beijing on July 28, 2009. The search engine provider has struck a deal to provide licensed music for free. [Photo: CFP]
Leading Chinese Internet search engine provider Baidu Inc announced Tuesday that it has made a deal with One-Stop China, a joint venture of three leading global record companies – Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music, to provide Web users free and licensed songs.
Under the two-year deal between Baidu and One-Stop China, the three music labels will license over 500,000 songs to Baidu, including their upcoming new releases, Kaiser Kuo, Baidu's director of international communications, told the Global Times Tuesday.
The service currently is only open to users from the Chinese mainland. The licensed songs will be available for free streaming and download on Baidu's ad-supported MP3 search page and its newly launched social music platform, Ting, which means "listen" in Chinese.
Baidu will pay a fee to the three companies for each time a song is downloaded or played in a stream.
Kuo told the Global Times that the company is considering introducing a personalized fee-based music service later this year, and in the future it would also provide promotional support for the three music labels.
"All illegal links of the licensed songs would be removed from Baidu. The 500,000 licensed songs have covered the majority of songs," said Kuo, noting that one may still find links to get access to unlicensed songs on Baidu in the future.
Baidu has been accused of providing pirated content to users for a long time. Last year, more than 100 writers and publishers sued Baidu for copyright violations by its online library service, Wenku.
In February, the United States Trade Representative named Baidu as one of the world's 33 "notorious markets" for piracy and counterfeiting.
The deal is significant to music labels, whose sales have been seriously affected by illegal online music distribution.
Digital sales accounted for 76 percent of China's legitimate music revenue in 2010, compared with just 29 percent globally, according to a report from the New York Times Tuesday.
"This is a big step for Baidu," said Sun Peilin, an industry analyst at market research firm Analysys International, adding that content providers need to deal with copyright issues first in order to further grow in the industry.
"Unlike the publishing industry, where there are more than 500 publishers, the music industry is highly concentrated," said Sun.
The three companies own copyrights for most songs, thus it is easier for Baidu to solve the copyright issues in the music industry first," Sun remarked.
