Google whistles a new tune

Google on Thursday launched a new service intended to give searchers fast links to song lyrics, musical artists and CD titles on the main search results page.

Google Music will allow a person to type in the name of a band, artist, album or song in the main Google search bar, and results will appear at the top, accompanied by icons of music notes, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

Items that can be purchased will have links to merchants for online ordering or downloading, she said. Initial merchant partners include Apple Computer's iTunes service, RealNetworks Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com.

"We aren't building out a music store," Mayer said. "We are getting people to the iTunes store" and others.

Results will also include links to supplemental Google Web pages with more information about the music, including names of tracks on a CD and other CDs a band or artist has released. Google also will provide snippets of reviews from sites on the Web and links to those sites.

"This has been one of the longstanding unfilled user needs," Mayer said. "We saw a search need where we weren't providing users with the highest-quality results that we could."

[SqlserverCode]

A new week...

A new week -- a new service from Google


http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com/

[Galley]

My idea ;-)

Gee, I submitted that very idea to Google two years ago. They weren't interested at the time.

[SqlserverCode]

They were

They were interested, they just didn't tell you and you didn't get paid for it

http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com/

[Don_Dodge]

Google is 8 years late, AltaVista was the first

Eight years ago Nick Whyte and our team at AltaVista invented multi-media search. We were the first with Image (picture) Search, Video Search, and Music Search. Seven years ago I joined the team at Napster where we invented P2P music search and file sharing. Pioneers sometimes win fame, but rarely earn fortunes. In this case, the not so fast "fast follower" Google will probably make the fortune.

All that multi-media search technology we developed at AltaVista is now the property of Yahoo. Yahoo acquired AltaVista several years ago and many of the brilliant AV engineers are still there. In fact, the Image, Video, and Music search technology is still working on the Yahoo site today.

Incidentally, Nick Whyte now works with the MSN Search group at Microsoft. MSN Search already has Image Search and could add Music Search at anytime. Gee, could Video Search be next?

I wrote a blog on this subject this morning. You can read the full story at http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2005/12/oogle_music_sea.html

[dave girouard]

alta vista?

come on don . . . you know it wasn't AV that first did image search and video search . .

[Dr Juice phD]

Lawsuit?

So will the music publishers sue Google now for offering lyrics too?

[DaClyde]

just a search, not hosting

Google isn't hosting all this content, they're still just offering a search service. Most of the results are probably already available thru their main search with the right keywords. Though, it could very easily result in hundreds of C&D letters and lawsuits against the sites in Google's search results.

[chuchucuhi]

the game

is never about who's first it's about who can market their brand better...ipod anyone?

[bobby_brady]

Next: Google vs RIAA

Can't search lyrics, I'm sure the RIAA lawyers will find some sort of croocked law. If not, then payoff Congress.

[AimsAlpha]

More power to Google

Awesome XD, can't wait for the next thing up Google! Keep the good work comin.

[poster48150]

where?

So how do we actually access this new feature?

[pgorman]

Where to find Google's Music Search?

http://www.google.com/help/features.html#music

[pgorman]

AlltheWeb has offered MP3 search for years...

AlltheWeb.com, which is currently owned by Yahoo, was developed by Fast Search & Transfer (FAST). AlltheWeb has offered MP3 searching for years... Not really sure what makes this special to Google. See AlltheWeb music search here: http://www.alltheweb.com/?cat=mp3&cs=utf8&q=&rys=0&itag=crv&_sb_lang=pref

[natatarajanganesan]

I want to sing a tune and search the web

All the music search is fine. The real thing is when a person can just hum a tune and search the WWW to locate the song and hten possibly buy the album