So, it seems that Google China has finally decided to make some noise (translated story) about their free MP3 search service. When this went into beta almost a year ago we were predicting that it would be game-changing news, but somehow it has remained under the radar. At their press conference today, however, Google China announced that all four major labels are on board, as well as all the major publishers and some 140+ indie labels, through their partner in the project, Top100. This amounts to some 1.1 million songs being given away for free. Surely this equals headlines?
So far there is not much in the way of English language coverage of this story, but here is a translated version of Google’s blog post on the matter. This service is intended to boost Google’s fortunes in China, a market in which it is being comprehensively outgunned by resident search behemoth Baidu. Baidu themselves have responded to these announcements, translated here.
A quick search suggests that they do indeed have a deep catalogue. Try it for yourself here.
Bizarrely, however, at least one song we found had the following in the tagging: “RiP BY MUJi”, suggesting that their MP3s are not from the most wholesome of origins.
[...] Web2Asia on Twitter and Outdustry) CrunchBase Information Google Baidu Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
Posted by Google China Signs Big Music For Free MP3 Search Engine on March 30th, 2009.
[...] tip to Web2Asia – via Twitter – and Outdustry) CrunchBase Information Google Baidu Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
Posted by Google lance officiellement son moteur de recherche de MP3 en Chine on March 30th, 2009.
[...] (Hat tip to Web2Asia – via Twitter – and Outdustry) [...]
Posted by Google China Signs Big Music For Free MP3 Search Engine | Recopylator on March 30th, 2009.
[...] (Hat tip to Web2Asia – via Twitter – and Outdustry) [...]
Posted by Google China Signs Big Music For Free MP3 Search Engine | Tech News - Business News And Social Networking on March 30th, 2009.
[...] ?Twitter???Web2Asia????Outdustry????? CrunchBase Information Google Baidu Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
Posted by ??Google????????????????MP3????? on March 31st, 2009.
[...] tip to Web2Asia – via Twitter – and Outdustry) CrunchBase Information Google Baidu Information provided by [...]
Posted by Google lance officiellement son moteur de recherche de MP3 en Chine « mensonblog on March 31st, 2009.
[...] few hours later via the salivating tweets of more media-savvy Beijingren that Google China had just launched its free mp3 service, which, of course, happens to feature both [...]
Posted by Street Legal | Samantha Culp on April 1st, 2009.