GOOGLE IS offering a search service for free and legal music downloads in mainland China that are supported by advertising.

Music Onebox, as Google is calling the service, routes punters to Top100.cn, a website that already has licensing agreements with about 100 music labels and allows Chinese wibblers to download or stream tunes free of charge. Internet users outside China are blocked from accessing Top100.cn.

Google proclaimed: "This legal music service will help users avoid dead links, slow downloads, inaccurate search results, and poor quality or incomplete songs." Google also said it is not sharing in the advertising revenue that supports the Top100.cn website.

Almost all Chinese music downloads are unlicenced. Apple's Itunes digital music store is not available in China, and free digital copies of nearly all popular music are distributed online.

According to AP, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) claims that over 99 per cent of all the music files distributed in China are what it calls "pirated " (meaning its members don't get paid for them). It complains that China's legitimate music sales of $76 million per year amount to less than one per cent of the music recording industry's global music sales, despite China having about a third of the world's population. µ