Google Gets In Tune With Music Search

Google, in a blog post which can be read by clicking here, wrote that the company gets millions of searches a day about music, but that it can take a long time to click to where the song can be downloaded.

However, with its new music search feature, by searching on a reference to a song, such as name of the song or its artist or album, the user will see at the top of his or her search results links to an audio preview of the songs for instant gratification.

Those links go to one of Google's music search partners, MySpace or Lala, wrote Murali Viswanathan, product manager, and Ganesh Ramanarayanan, software engineer, in the blog. MySpace and Lala provide a preview of the music and, very conveniently, just happen to also provide the links needed to purchase the full song.

For users searching for a song but are not sure exactly which song they are searching for, Google is also partnering with Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody.

In other words, money will pass from the music-loving consumer to Google via the advertisements that pop up with the results and then to one or more partners even quicker than ever.

Missing from the blog was any reference to search results that allow music to be downloaded from iTunes. Given the growing competition between Google and Apple in the smartphone and consumer electronics market, the lack of reference to the planet's largest source of downloadable music is easy to understand.

The Google music search is slated to be available by Thursday.