Baidu to launch Ting: a legal music streaming and download service in China

It looks like everyone is getting into the cloud music business. On the other end of the world, Baidu, the number one search engine in China has been reported to be nearing the public launch of its music-streaming and downloading service. This move comes off as pretty unexpected – in case you didn’t know, Baidu has had a long history with being the top search engine for allowing users to illegally download music.

The service is called Ting and will allow users to look for music, stream it and even download most of the songs at no charge. The service will also feature a Last.fm-like functionality that allows people to make friends based on their musical tastes. Users also have the options to pause and skip tracks that they don’t like.

Ting has been reported to be in closed beta stage now and will be made available to the public in the coming weeks. It’ll be interesting to see how the folks over in China react to their favorite illegal MP3 portal going legit.