Google Launches Music Search
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Written By Reprise Media | December 15, 2005 | Share This
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Google is announcing a new music search feature that will display artist information, album art, CD reviews and links to online sellers when users key in terms related to popular artists and bands.
Results will appear in a prominent position above the primary search results in the Google-dubbed “one box” area, which also features information on weather, books and movies.
Why the need for a special area dedicated to this type of result? The Official Google Blog has the explanation:
“You might be thinking, ‘why can’t I just type in an album name or a song name and get the same music search results?’ There are many album names and songs which are also plain English words. Sometimes users are looking for music information related to those words, and sometimes they aren’t. As we get better at knowing when our users want music information, we hope to expand this feature to include more queries.”
Music-related searches are a big chunk of Google’s traffic, so the push makes sense from a business standpoint as well, though this article in CNN Money says Google has no plans to charge music sellers for the service.
Today many of the digital music seller stocks are down, including Apple, but one would wonder if maybe Google’s getting into the game too late to make a real impact (see social networking & Orkut).
ECommerce Times has a good round-up of coverage that’s out there today, including this quote from Kelsey Group Managing Editor Greg Sterling which is decidedly glass half full. Sterlin says features like music search could help keep users on the Google.com page:
“This is, I believe, how Google solves and resolves the problem of maintaining its almost religious devotion to one search box and Google.com while offering richer and deeper content and specific navigation - a vertical user experience - in particular areas.”
On a related note, Gothamists may not be able to get into Manhattan tomorrow morning (transit strike) and if they do they probably won’t be able to leave to join Howard Stern’s goodbye blowout (that pesky ‘work’ thing) but they can listen to it on Webcast, courtesy of Yahoo.
InformationWeek has all the details.
Topics: Google |