March 29, 2009

Google China Music Search, Now Available Everywhere

Google China Music Search (English translation), a service launched last year by Google to better compete in a market dominated by Baidu, is now publicly accessible worldwide and it has a new homepage. The service has been created in partnership with Top100.cn to offer legal MP3 downloads.


"The venture goes directly after Baidu's music search audience, by offering high-quality music files embedded with a digital "watermark" that lets record labels track how often their songs are downloaded. The idea: Better-quality files will draw users away from unlicensed downloads, and give labels and search companies valuable data needed to make money from advertising," explained Wall Street Journal.

While the service is now accessible everywhere, you can only download music if you are in China (or if you use a proxy). Google Music has a large collection of music and there's visual tool that lets you find songs by choosing the tempo, the genre and other characteristics.


Except for this regional service, Google doesn't have any full-fledged music-related product. There's a YouTube category for music videos, a very limited music search engine, a music player and a media server for Google Desktop.

{ Thanks, electronixtar. }

11 comments:

  1. Google is a great company! That's exactly what I want~

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  2. 这个极富创意!google china 加油

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  3. Don't forget that Google had the Google Music Trends (RIP)

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  4. Whats the cost for each song?

    I assume that iTunes is still blocked in China.

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  5. << What's the cost for each song? >>

    Obviously, it's free. How else could it compete with other services that provide illegal downloads?

    Google [music piracy in China]

    "Music copyright infringement in the People's Republic of China is widely regarded as one of the highest in the world. Some reports from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry say about 95 percent or higher of music sales in China are unauthorized, most coming from downloads of copyrighted music on the Internet." (Wikipedia)

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  6. Here's the post from Google China Blog. Some (automatically translated and incoherent) excerpts:

    "It is said that the origin of music is when the original voice of the human exchange of high and low strength. Modern society, music Google search can return to the most natural of human status, with the rhythm of music, strong or weak, sharp tone of ease, rich sound simple and look for favorite music, without having to rely on the abstract language.

    Google Music Search on March 30, 2009 on line, when the Chinese Google homepage search box color below to add a small icon in the music search, which is Google China and the Whale Music Net (www.Top100. cn) together for the formal launch of the Chinese mainland users free, high-quality genuine music search, Google China is only at a global introduction of the National Service."

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  7. This is really old news... I live in Beijing and I've been using the service for a year now. This is just a relaunch with a snazzier page design. You can't download absolutely everything (the most popular Mandarin acts like S.H.E and Jay Chou don't allow downloads) but it's still an amazing service.... I've been collecting the complete works of U2, Faye Wong, etc., completely free of charge and legally! Before this I had to go to great lengths to source legal music here.

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  8. the above:
    you are a real big unimaginable fool...

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  9. Google is a largest search engine. it is very big company. Google provide many services. A big search for china music is via Google.

    music

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