Will Baidu’s (BIDU) Chinese Music Business Model Spread?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Chinese search leader Baidu (BIDU) has formed a partnership with the largest Chinese record label to stream music online. For free. Advertising will run on the pages where the music is accessed.

Money will be paid to artists from the advertising revenue pot.

The idea, while not entirely novel, is being put into place by the most powerful internet company in China. If it works well, the question is whether it will move to other place, especially the US.

"Free" music could put a dent in Apple’s (AAPL) strangle hold on digital music and help companies like RealNetworks (RNWK) which have hundreds of millions of digital players downloaded on PCs. The extent to which this music can be transferred to MP3 players is not clear yet, but iTunes might get some competition.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected].

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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