SI: Sony Music Catalog Included In Google China Free Music Service

[Christopher]

Google has started a free online music service in China offering songs by artists including U2, Beyonce and Kanye West in a market with almost 300 million Internet users. The service allows users to download and save songs from Warner Music Group Corp., Sony Corp., Universal Music Group, EMI Group Ltd., and 140 other independent labels, Google said in a statement distributed at a briefing in Beijing.

Google’s service, which is also being provided in cooperation with Chinese music Web site Top100, currently has 350,000 songs available for download. That number will be increased to 1.1 million recordings, Gary Chen, chief executive officer of Top100.cn, said at a briefing.

Google’s music offering rivals services provided by Baidu.com Inc., which has more than double the market share of the Mountain View, California-based company in China. The record companies will get a share of revenue from advertising sold on the music Web site, generating sales for them in a market where 99 percent of all downloads are illegal, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Read more about this new service at Bloomberg.

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