Baidu to Offer Free, Legal Music via New Deal with Major Labels

Baidu has announced that it has reached a deal with three major music labels to offer free and legal music for download and streaming to its users.

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.

Such deals are not uncommon in China, but Baidu is the largest search engine in the country, with as much as 84 percent of searches going through its site.

Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music have partnered for the deal, creating the One-Stop China joint venture.

"Baidu has always striven to provide the best possible experience to our users," Jennifer Li, chief financial officer of Baidu, said.

"Our partnership with One-Stop China marks an exciting new beginning. I'm confident that Baidu, the Chinese music fans, recording artists, and the record companies alike will all benefit from this win-win partnership," she added.

Baidu's dedicated MP3 search service will only link to licensed music from now on. Some 500,000 titles will be available for download and streaming via the new service, 10 percent of which will be local songs, in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Baidu is also launching a social music site, ting!, through which the songs will also be available for free to members.

"Under the terms of the deal, Baidu will remunerate music content owners on a per-play and per-download basis for all tracks delivered through the Baidu MP3 Search service, as well as Baidu's newly launched social music platform, ting!," Baid revealed.

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 deal is a lot more significant, especially since pirated copies will no longer be offered directly via the search engine.