Back in February I wrote about how Google was in negotiations with major and independent record labels in offering a new search site in China which would allow users to get licensed music for free. Well this week it happened. Google launched “Music OneBox”. Music Onebox will direct users to a Web site called ‘Top100.cn’ which will then enable them to download or stream legally available music content for free.
Top100.cn is a company based in Beijing which has already gathered music licensing agreements from over 100 record labels from all over the world. Both Top100.cn and the record labels will make their money from ad revenues. Google has said that they would not take any revenue from the ads and that the new service will offer faster downloads as well as avoid dead links and poor quality downloads that are usually associated with the illegal sites which are so prominent in China now.
The hope here is that folks in China will veer away from sites like Baidu which offer links to illegal downloads and to the new model. Currently about 90% of the music distributed in China is from illegal download.
My personal hope here is that the revenues acquired by this new business model will find its way to the Artists and songwriters as well. It’s important that we in the creative community keep an eye on this emerging new system because if successful, it will only be a matter of time before it works its way on to the U.S. and other countries.
