Last week Google announced yet another product launch, this time its a new search algo, called Music Onebox. This feature allows you to stream songs from partner service like MySpace’s iLike, Pandora, imeem, Lala, and Rhapsody). What does this all mean, to the average listener?
Most noticeably, the ability to locate a song from an artist is going to be a snap. You can click to listen to a tune with a jump right from the search results page. No need to even know the name of the song to find it (Just type in some of the lyrics and off Google goes!). A new post over at Google blog site lists smart search as its intelligence.
Any Downsides? Of course, due to the restrictive licensing some of the songs are just 30-second sound bites. Second, this is being rolled our for the US market only, at least for now.
There are some interesting aspects to report especially what was mentioned in a recent TechCrunch report. The TC blog revealed that Google’s Music Onebox will highlight exclusive songs contributed by “a number of well known artists” There are over 20 acts rumored to be offering tunes exclusively found on Google search, in addition a few of those songs will be given away for free.
Looking at this on paper, Google is not partnering directly with the record companies for licensing, instead Google has the labels approve and sign on with the new feature. So far mainstream content producers have welcomed the idea as a way to increase bottom line revenues and capitalize on market trends.
“Google is the most powerful internet partner that these music services could have ”Many indie artists and labels might be able to control and improve the content of their search results with the addition of Onebox to the search landscape.
Related posts:
- MySpace to push music features in social networking community Although MySpace is still a hugely popular social networking site in certain parts of the world, its appeal has been steadily slipping in the over...
- Did the BBC Pay for Search Engine Rankings? – The Press Get it Wrong Again! News broke last week that the British Broadcasting Corporation had been ‘paying’ Google for search engine rankings. The original article was released by the Daily...
- Bing: Fastest Growing Search Engine in the US Despite a slow start and several predictions from industry experts that Bing might not be able to make any significant impact in Google’s market share,...
- Google Announces UK Ad Campaign Google is a household name in most parts of the UK – and anyone with an internet connection is likely aware of the search engine,...
- Social Search Google’s newest Lab experiment – Webmaster & SEO News We mentioned Google’s new social search in a previous news post, however now we feel we should go into more detail for our readers, as...
