Baidu, the leading search engine in China, has entered into a mutual contract with the prime music album launching companies like Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music to use Baidu’s MP3 search platform for their music distribution. The aim is to discourage the legal bickering against Baidu that it is promoting piracy.
Baidu also signed a contract with One Stop China to provide them its server for their music streaming. The Ting – a shared music platform was also introduced by Baidu.
Music releasing companies have blamed Baidu in past for many times that it has provided help to users in order to access illegal links, which is promoting music piracy.
Dick Wei – JP Morgan’s Analyst based in Hong Kong said that the venture will surely be in the favor of Baidu and will spread a positive impact amongst its users and partners regarding the information and links available on its site.
The provisions of agreement include that Baidu will pay its music studio partners at the ratio of per-screaming of every song that will be distributed using its server or Ting link.
The CFO of Baidu said that they are extremely glad with signing a deal with One-Stop and are also looking forward to move the joint agreement ahead with full zeal. The CFO further added, saying that they are sure enough that all their users, fans and contributors will benefit through this winning collaboration.
On the other side, the contract will be profitable for the music launching firms as they will not have to face opportunity loss due to piracy as China is considered as one of the largest market in terms of Internet users with as many as 470 million users.
Baidu was involved into contracts with other companies in the past, such as Music Copyright Society of China, in which they had to pay to MCSC for all the downloading activities through Ting.
The report also stated that Baidu, being a leading search engine, is enjoying a huge market share of nearly 75.9 percent. With this extensive market share, Baidu is putting efforts to avoid piracy through making such ventures. Hence, these steps will help Baidu to stop legal backbiting and ongoing rumors about it for disseminating piracy.
