The Rotten Word

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I must seem like a fanboy, and maybe I am, but Google is at it again, fresh off their Google Voicemail announcement. This time, they’re making your search for music a little more, well, musical. The announcement of their new music search explains how they understand that, when we search for music, we want to hear about it, not read about it.

They also understand that we may want to purchase it, or listen to similar music. That’s why they have pulled all of those options together in one convenient, Google-ized spot. Click through for the sweetly-sounding details.

Google Music OneBox essentially aggregates results from multiple online music streaming and purchasing services. The update causes OneBox results to appear at the top for music queries and allows you to click on one of the services and stream the music you were looking for right away. See the screenshot below, from a Google search for Tenacious D:

As you can see, they list some songs by the artist, presumably the most commonly-search-for songs. Clicking a song title opens a new window with an embedded Lala player that streams that song. You can buy the song or listen to more from that artist. If you click those links at the bottom (see screenshot above), you can stream a radio station based on that artist’s music.

It’s funny how intuitive these ideas seem in retrospect, and it’s a little surprising that none of the big-name players have done anything more robust with music searches until Google came along with this. As usual, though, I’ll ask for more right away: let’s include some tour information, secure a lyrics-results partner, and consider photos of the artist instead of random album covers.

Just some ideas.