Like thousands of tech-savvy young Chinese, Samuel Ying regularly checks in at Baidu.com to top-up his music collection from its links to more than 4 million MP3 files.

“The site (allows) me to choose the sort and size of the music files and the speed to download them,” said Ying, 23, a salesman for an international consumer products company in Shanghai. “Compared with other tools, it’s got more options.”