After watching Jon Lajoie's latest Youtube video, I wanted to see if his music was available through Baidu's MP3 search. Being at work, I have access to proxies from all over the world, so I first started with my Chinese proxy and I got six of his songs available for download, for free (and I imagine without his consent). I then copied the searches URL and pasted it into a browser with a US proxy, and, strangely enough, it said there was nothing found (Chinese text: 抱歉，没有找到与“jon lajoie” 相关的MP3内容/ English translation: Sorry, not found with "jon lajoie" of MP3 related content).




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Initially, I had forgotten that these two browsers were set to different proxies, so I refreshed and tried the search again, same results. Then, I checked the proxy, and found that if I changed my second browser to the Chinese proxy, I got the same results as the first browser.

Has Baidu decided to follow Google's free music download program (available in China only) and compensate the record labels/artists for these downloads, or is it business as usual as long as you have a Chinese IP address ... possibly indicating that Baidu is trying to hide this from eyes outside of the country? I'm not ruling out the first option, especially after reading this. However, again based on that article's publication date and that it states Baidu is still just "considering" this as a possibility, I would have to say the second option is more plausible.