Bloomberg reports that international and domestic music companies are urging advertisers to boycott Baidu over claims the Chinese search engine facilitates music piracy. Record labels have made little headway in their battle against Baidu, despite repeatedly taking the search engine to court over links to unauthorized music in its search results, so they now look to be trying to appeal to advertisers conscience by asking them to stop advertising on Baidu. Guo Biao, the China chief for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said on Tuesday that Baidu accounts for over 40 percent of all pirated music distribution in China, according to the Bloomberg report. The report quotes a music industry executive saying that piracy is eating away 80 percent of record companies expected revenues in China.

I have a feeling that this latest strategy adopted by the record industry will have about as much success as its previous attempts to get Baidu to change its ways - meaning, not much. We have said previously that music companies have an opportunity to pioneer new business models in China, but they are fighting a useless battle by continuing to think in terms of the existing model in other markets, which has never been part of the consumer culture here.