Okay, this has to be the coolest hack of the week. Visual search engine SearchMe has just added a music search tab that brings back results with free, legal, unlimited full-song streams and cover art you can flip through. It’s CoverFlow on the Web. And it actually trumps the experience one Yahoo’s music search, which also offers free full streams through Rhapsody—but those are limited to 25 streams a month per searcher.
SearchMe instead is tapping into imeem’s vast catalog of fully licensed music. (Along with Rhapsody and MySpace Music, imeem is one of a handful of companies with comprehensive music streaming rights from all the major labels). [Correction] But SearchMe is not using imeem’s API, which originally was limited to apps on imeem itself, but has since been extended to other sites through a. Instead, it using the widget loophole in imeem’s licensing deal with the record labels. Imeem users can stream any song and create playlists on imeem itself or through imeem’s widgets which can be embedded elsewhere. (Other partners such as Apture and Slide also use imeem’s API to invoke imeem widgets).
SearchMe is essentially grabbing the imeem widget for each song search result. As with all imeem music widgets, there are buttons on the bottom that will let anyone buy the song from iTunes, Amazon, or eBay. SearchMe won’t see any of that affiliate revenue, but if music search gets more people to actually use SearchMe it will worthwhile. The search engine is still tiny, but is gaining some traction (see Google Web Trends chart below).
This is a great way to discover music. You could do the same searches on imeem itself, but SearchMe’s user interface is bigger and beefier. Search for a band like Vampire Weekend (and click on the “music” tab), and all the results play through one after another. You can also create and save your own playlists by creating search stacks. For instance, here is a stack of the Top 10 Billboard songs.
Last week, SearchMe cut 20 percent of its staff (11 people). This week, it is making strides once again to move forward.
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Can anyone explain this amazing traffic of theirs?
http://quantcast.com/searchme.com
Are people *really* using searchme that much??
No. This makes more sense:
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
i love that tool!!… i will definately be using it
They will probably be blacklisted pretty soon.
Well, Randy Adams was quoted in the Standard (http://tinyurl.com/5s9yjn) as saying he wanted to:
“engage in smart partnerships, invest in technology and innovate with services and products that consumers embrace, ”
So basically Searchme.com are using the ever influential base of imeem to grow their lagging search engine idea into a music search portal?
Something tells me that won’t hold up, Google are already trying this in China with “Music Onebox”
looks like we’re running out of meaningful things to write about. is this what we can expect throughout the downturn?
Yes.
This, and a couple dozen reports each month about former startups whose elaborate and lofty dreams of becoming the next Yahoo/Amazon/Google turned into over-funded failures, wasting huge chunks of the capital of VCs flush with cash from successful prior bets on Yahoo/Amazon/Google.
Layoffs aren’t going to save these companies. Far too many of them have really, really marginal ideas and business models consisting of “build it, and Yahoo/Amazon/Google will buy us!”.
I know, I work for one of them.
cool! I’ve used it a few times and it works great even for smaller, lesser known bands.
Scrolls way to slow. You should be able to skip lots of songs at once without having a seizure.
I’m not seeing this behavior at all, even for popular bands. Perhaps this loophole has already been closed.
I like it! very neato!
You can always depend on Eric to delve into these script weenie products.
“TechCrunch” should rename itself to “TechCunts”.
So where does this leave SoundExchange’s arguments for the big increase to internet-based music pricing?
Seems that technology is out ahead of the music industry as usual. Perhaps it’s time for SoundExchange to save the legal fees and ease off in the hardline with the streaming media companies, as those discussion seem to be edging towards irrelevancy.
What with the obsession TC has with searchme? TC seems to be easily amused by every little thing searchme does. Everything SM does had been done before, the coverflow, the youtube api, etc … not to mention it’s extremely slow
oh yeah, and by publicizing the hack, SM is going to get banned pretty quick … so, yay?
my friend was just laid off after being hired for a few months, is it a responsible way for start up to move forward and upward?
Very cool feature indeed. In fact, we thought it would be cool also…back in June
http://www.viewzi.com/search/joshuamp3/pearl%20jam
In fact, we take that feature one step further with out album view:
http://www.viewzi.com/search/t.....earl%20jam
giovanni gallucci, viewzi
change the way you look at search.
friend me up! friendfeed.com/giovanni | plurk.com/user/galluccinet | pownce.com/giovanni | twitter.com/giovanni
Well @giovanni if this is true, then you are just going to fail quicker at being a music search engine!
This is my new pandora…. Except with the ability to fastforward through as many songs, and rewind as I please. Nice!
@Josh - ouch
http://kizkscraziness.blogspot.com/
So does this mean that any artists in the Imeem catalogue can be streamed on Searchme? Because Imeem only pays majority of artists for streaming on its own site, thus this could be a breach due to no royalties being paid, and Imeem getting something for nothing!