Google Stepped In To Music Search

Google is tailoring its search engine to better address music search. A search for an artist will now bring up song titles, album art, links to lyrics and reviews, and advertisements for places where the music can be purchased. Items that can be purchased will have links to merchants for
online ordering or downloading.
The online sources include Apple, RealNetworks and eMusic, and retailers selling CDs including Amazon, WalMart and others. For the CD retailers, Google
receives data feeds of the inventory and only returns a link to a store if the item is available.
Search results will 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, as well as links to those sites. The company has, ofcourse, constantly been improving its search service to match user needs. Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president for search products and user experience, admitted “one of the things Google wasn't good at” and that consumers wanted was music.
There’s more to the move than just better search results: Google’s current focus on music comes at a time then more companies are selling and distributing music online. Mike McGuire, research director
for Gartner Inc., said Google would be a natural place for consumers to look when they’re trying to think of songs or shop for music. “It gets people to move from CDs to online.” Google’s improvement of its music search capabilities is part of the always-on war with its rivals. Yahoo! launched its Yahoo! Music service earlier this year, and tied it with its blogs and other communication tools. And with the proliferation of online music content, more companies are enhancing their search capabilities: Apple’s iTunes, for example, allows users to search its database by artist or title, or within various genres.
Online libraries such as Rhapsody and Napster also offer searches of their databases. And services such as 411 Song sell song identification: you can hold a cell phone up to a speaker playing a tune, and you get the name of the song you played!