Reuters today confirmed that the struggling ad-supported free music service, QTrax (not to be confused with Pepsi’s new China based record label Q Music) has teamed up with Baidu. H/T to our friends at Outdustry.
This seems to be a very, very beneficial solution for QTrax, who will now have all music searches on Baidu referred to their free and ad supported database of legitimate content (QTrax has licenses with all 4 majors – just). We cannot see the immediate upside of this union to Baidu. It could be that QTrax are offering a exceptional amount of the ensuing revenue back to Baidu, or that Baidu sees a good strategic fit with a company already signed up with the 4 majors and already using P2P technology to deliver DRM free downloads. Will there be issues with language and compatibility? Only time will tell…
What seems apparent is that this is a significant step forward in the battle against piracy here in China.
You can read more about QTrax and their struggles HERE.
You can read the full Reuters release HERE.