Free music from Google downloads
Mar30Written by:
2009/03/30 04:52 PM 
Music piracy is rife all over the internet. Record labels and artists claim they are loosing millions to piracy, and illegal downloads. Now Google have announced that you can download free music legally.
In Beijing today,Monday, Google formally launched a music search service in China that offers free downloads of licensed songs that is supported by advertising.
Google partnered with Chinese website Top100.cn, to secured the licence for more than 1.1 million songs from record labels including Warner, Sony, Universal and EMI, Google said in a statement.
"Ensuring that consumers have access to legal sources of music is the foundation for our development of Google Music Search," said Kai-Fu Lee, president of Google China.
But here is the snag line. The service is only available in China. South Africa, although not as bad as our trading partners China, is also high on the music piracy list. Taking away the cost of the product will surely sort out the piracy issues. The idea of funding it with advertising is a good one, but yet to be proven. Google seemed to suggest that its trial run in August was more than positive.
I say well done Google. Now bring free music downloads to South Africa.
blog comments powered by 2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Free music from Google downloads
Go with some good podcasts for free music until you South Africa gets the service. There's so many genres of music podcasts available. You may not find the exact song you're looking for, but it can open your eyes to new artists available. And it's free. I'm listening to Above & Beyond's Trance Around The World whilst writing this comment. Heard them during UMF and found over 250 podcasts lasting 2 hrs each that I can enjoy free of charge with great music mixed by them. Also, Pandora radio is great. You create your own "radio channels" by typing in your favorite artist and/song. The service then plays music by that artist and similar styled artists. Also free. Little ads show on the screen while playing. But it's usually behind a few other screens so I don't noticed them. Don't tell the record labels that though:-) That's my two cents added to the conversation.
By Tory Almond on
2009/03/30 09:09 PM
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Re: Free music from Google downloads
Thanks for the good pointer Tory. It's not what you know, but who you know.
By Robert Bravery on
2009/03/30 09:14 PM
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