On Billboard.biz, Glenn Peoples covers Google’s recent music play in China. Believe it or not, the Big G is actually second in China to Baidu, which controls 62 percent of the search engine market. Google’s search service is free for labels, but here’s the kicker: Chinese fans won’t pay for downloads. The model works well enough there, since labels pull in funds from Internet-site ads.

Reasonable sounding model that doesn’t translate in the states, however. Glenn cites a Forbes.com story that claims a good reasons it won’t work in the U.S.: fans’ willingness to pay for downloads.

Besides, labels still bear the scars from the original Napster wars and are about as open to free downloads stateside as kids are to broccoli.

I’ll say more about the indie artist and Google’s search-engine ad program in future posts.

Other coverage on the subject on hypebot.com.