Google Rolls Out Free Music Download Service – in China

Why does China get all of the good stuff first?  Maybe China's got the GhostNet system pointed at Google and is threatening to use it.  :-)

Today, Google launched free downloads of licensed music in China, while at the same time sharing advertising revenue with major music labels.

Lee Kai-Fu, Google China president, said that Google was a little behind in the music search market because it just didn't offer a music download service.  This was the main reason for Google trailing behind Baidu.com Inc.

"We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads," Lee told reporters. "We were missing one piece ... we didn't have music."

The service plans to offer about 350,000 titles from Chinese and foreign artists.  This number is expected to increase to about 1.1 million titles within the next few months according to Gary Chen, chief executive at www.Top100.cn, Google's partner website co-founded by NBA superstar Yao Ming.

Google currently has no plans to expand the music sharing service beyond China, said Lee.

The search features themselves are pretty interesting.  Users can search by "beat" in a song and "instrumentality," as well as by artist and song name.

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