UPDATE: thanks to Andy for pointing out Beijing Daze’s much better analysis of Baidu’s offering, namely that Google has had a somewhat better service in the China market for nearly 3 years. We covered the Google thing back in August 2008.
Baidu, China’s largest search engine, has reached a music licensing agreement with One-Stop China (OSC), a joint venture between Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG which will make over 500,000 songs in their catalogues available for free and legal download and streaming on Baidu’s music page and through the search engine company’s new social music venture, Baidu ting!
Within the agreement, Baidu will pay the artists’ and labels’ licensing fees, allowing China’s 450 million Internet users to stream and download these songs freely and legally, though with commercial interruption. A “pro” paid model with limited or no commercials is in the works, scheduled for release later in the fall.
It will be interesting to monitor what this means for the notoriety of foreign groups in China. Though many artists in the One-Stop joint venture already have ardent Chinese fans (Avril Lavigne and Lady Gaga come to mind), we wonder what this means for younger bands signed onto the major labels. San Francisco’s Cults, one of the most talked-about groups of 2011, went from deliberate Internet anonymity to signing with Columbia (a subsidiary of Sony BMG). It will be interesting to see how these labels will (or won’t) use this new platform to promote their diverse rosters.