An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

October 29, 2009

Google Music OneBox 2.0

Google updated the music search OneBox, which used to include song titles, album names and some other information licensed from AllMusic. The new music search OneBox is only focused on finding music, previewing songs and easily buying them.

Search for an artist, an album name or even some lyrics and Google returns a list of songs that can be played with one click. Full music previews are provided by iLike and Lala, but Google also links to other music sites: Pandora, Rhapsody and imeem. When you click on a music result, Google opens a player in a pop-up window, which isn't very user-friendly.

"With Lala, you can hear one full length preview per song. Each subsequent play will be a 0:30 clip," explains Lala. This limitation is very easy to bypass: just clear the cookies for lala.com.

The OneBox is limited to the US, probably because the music sites that partnered with Google can provide full previews only in the US. I didn't manage to trigger the OneBox, not even using a US proxy. The sample searches provided by Google include some additional parameters that need to be added to a Google URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bob+Dylan&esrch=MusicOneboxDemoOptin::LaunchDemoOptIn

Google says it will be "rolling this feature out gradually to users across the U.S. over the next day".




Not wanting to feel left out, Yahoo reminds users that it launched a similar feature last year. "Since launching a partnership with Rhapsody in September 2008 and launching the FoxyPlayer last year, music has been an integral part of the Yahoo! Search experience as well. We have found that nearly 6 percent of all Yahoo! searches are music-related."

15 comments:

  1. I use a free public US proxy, and it works

    ReplyDelete
  2. Definetly a great idea just hope it works as good as it sounds!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's very nice trick, we like it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This sounds pretty exciting and convenient!

    ReplyDelete
  5. It gives the search engine an opportunity to harness some of this traffic as well as steer it in the direction of Google's choice.

    ReplyDelete
  6. That's because it's only available in the US.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I hope this tool can help me find all the old songs i grew up with!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nothing like revisiting those oldies.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great feature, I love Google for bringing stuff like that.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It provides the search engine a chance to tie together some of this passage and steer it in the path of the choice of Google.

    ReplyDelete
  11. does anyone else think that this new feature by google will put a big dent in itunes profits

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm more concerned with Google Instant and how it flickers to epileptic proportions when keying in new search terms nowadays.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Saying that it wants to bring music fans closer to your favorite artists, Google has added a new Music Search OneBox to its search results.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This is cool for Album Cover search.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.