Google names that tune in one

Thursday 29 October 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Search giant Google has taken a step into the on-line music market by launching a new search service in partnership with established music sites Lala and iLike (owned by MySpace).

Currently available only in the USA, the service – which some pundits are dubbing 'OneBox', as this was Google's internal code name – allows users to search for music tracks by entering song titles, artists or just snippets of lyrics. The search results include links to audio previews of the songs provided by partners MySpace and Lala, who conveniently also provide links to purchase the full song. The pop-up boxes also highlight music videos and other useful information, such as forthcoming concerts.

In an interview with CNET News, Google's Director of Product Management for Search Properties, RJ Pittman, explained, "It is directly embedded and integrated into Google search. There's no special button to push." All parties have been unwilling to disclose the financial arrangements but Pittman confirmed, "We push all the music engagement and commerce down through the partners."

In a post on the Official Google Blog on Wednesday, the day that the service was unveiled, Murali Viswanathan (Product Manager) and Ganesh Ramanarayanan (Software Engineer) explained that the new facility was part of Google's commitment to continually reducing 'time to result' in search. They add that a search engine should also be able to help users discover music they will like, saying "We've partnered with Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody to include links to their sites where you can discover music related to your queries as well."

The BBC News site quotes Mark Mulligan, an analyst at research firm Forrester, as saying that the service may offer a robust alternative to illegal file sharing with the widely used BitTorrent software. "Apple can do little about iPod owners downloading from BitTorrent," he wrote in a blog post. "But Google on the other hand can."

At the launch of the new music search feature on Wednesday at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, Google's Vice President of Search, Marissa Mayer, said, "At Google, we see millions of music-related queries every day." She also revealed that the terms 'music' and 'lyrics' are among the top 10 search terms of all time.

Just Search....Music Lyrics!

Apple's iTunes currently dominates the on-line music market, enjoying around 70% of global sales. In Europe Spotify, the free music-streaming service launched last year, is increasing in popularity, with more than two million users in the UK and in excess of six million across Europe as a whole. These are the services that Google and its partners are hoping to steal market share from.

In her post on the CNET News site, industry writer Caroline McCarthy points out the possible conflict between Google's new venture and its popular YouTube site, where music videos remain one of the most popular types of content. However, YouTube video results will continue to show up independently of the new searches in Google's results.

The new music alliance is seen as a coup for both MySpace – which is struggling to redefine itself as a pop culture brand rather than a social network – and Lala, which has also secured a new song-gifting deal with Facebook. Bill Nguyen, Lala's founder and Chairman, told CNET News that he believed that the new Google music search service was going to result in "a thousand percent increase in our sales". He added, "Instead of ending up with a pirate site and a page with a bunch of ads or random lyrics sites, you wind up with a play button."

Immediately after the Google launch, Yahoo! issued a blog post to point out that they had been offering this type of music search for some time. If music be the food of love…

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