MUMBAI: Demand and crave for music has been the strong point in India, with film music being rigorously played in weddings and religious functions. And where does the songs come from? They are downloaded from several websites catering to illegal downloads of music and films.

In its endurance to help users search for legal online streams and downloads, Google Inc. today launched a music service in India to combat growing digital piracy.
 
In the days to come, the tech giant will add the feature to its flagship search service through associations with three digital music providers who jointly have the rights to hundreds of thousands of Indian tracks, from Bollywood hits to Indian classical tunes.

The system will start working when a web user in India types a song into Google‘s search bar, the top links in response would be from Google‘s partners, Saregama India Ltd., New York-based media company Saavn and Web portal In.com. Clicking on a link will launch a pop-up music player where the requested content will be streamed for free.
 
Global interest in Indian music has increased in recent years after the hit song ‘Jai Ho‘ from Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire captivated audiences. But piracy, in the form of knock-off CDs and dozens of websites catering to illegal downloads, has dented the Indian market.

According to a report, the total Indian music industry revenue was about $165 million in 2009, a fraction of the $26.4 billion spent on recorded music globally.

Google hopes the new initiative will help labels fight piracy by directing Internet users to legitimate content downloads at the top of search results.

Google launched a similar service in the US last year with MySpace and La La Media Inc.‘s Lala.com.