Baidu, EMI close deal on free music service

China’s largest search engine Baidu.com has closed a deal with music giant EMI to start a free music service, reports China Tech News.
“Baidu will set up a special 'EMI Music Zone' in its music search channel which will legally stream all of EMI Music's Chinese repertoire, including recordings from artists such as Jolin Tsai, Stephanie Sun, David Tao, Sandy Lam and Richie Ren. While consumers listen to the music for free they will be exposed to Internet advertising, and EMI and Baidu will share the revenue generated by the advertising, a lackluster approach to monetizing and promoting digital music in China.”
It is a deal between up to not so long ago unlikely partners. A traditional music provider who would use heavy handed methods to fight piracy and a Chinese service whose main asset was access to pirated digital goodies.
The traditional music industry has learned that bringing teenagers to court for downloading illegal music is not helping them and in China they have found a method to make at least some money from advertisement. How lucrative that deal is going to be is still unclear. Video sharing service Tudou.com, three times the size of YouTube.com, has only recently started to introduce advertisement.