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.