A human resources office worker at the Chinese search engine Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has transformed into a pop star today with the launch of her first-ever song. Fittingly, the single by 23-year old Liu Dong – or Jocelin, to use her English name – is being released first of all on her company’s own streaming music service, Baidu Ting.
The song is called Angry Birds – yes, we’re not too sure how Rovio Mobile, makers of the hugely popular Angry Birds games, will feel about that – and went live at lunchtime today on the Ting web app. The song can be streamed or downloaded for free (it might be geo-restricted to China only) from Jocelin’s special promo song page. It’s a typical love song, with plenty of acoustic guitar, and an impressive singing debut from the Baidu HR staffer.
Jocelin Liu’s move into the music industry came after her appearance on the catwalk at the Baidu Chinese New Year party two months ago, which caused photos of her in a somewhat revealing dress (on the left in the top image) to flood Weibo and the Chinese internet as a whole.
After her catwalk photos first went viral, the number of her Weibo followers sky-rocketed, and her microblog account – here – now has nearly 300,000 fans. It is believed that Jocelin is sticking with her day-job at Baidu, and that a full-time move into the music industry or, say, modeling, is not yet on the cards. The song is a one-off release for now, with lyrics written by Jocelyn herself, and without record label distribution.
Baidu Ting launched in May of last year – and last summer resolved all of its outstanding copyright litigation to become the one of the country’s largest legit sources of free music.