I’m here at Capitol Records in Hollywood, California for a special media event where Lala, MySpace, iLike, Google and others are officially announcing the launch of Google’s Music Onebox — a special new kind of Google search result that will let you instantly stream songs directly from Google’s results page. We first broke the news of the feature’s impending launch last week, though none of the companies involved have been willing to comment on it until now.
Here’s how the new feature will work: Onebox will let users stream songs directly from Google’s search result page, and will also include additional content like tour information and music videos (the actual content shown will vary depending on the partner — more on that later). Enter a query for “Use Somebody”, and you’re going to see a small ‘play’ button in your search result that lets you stream the Kings of Leon song in its entirety, or buy the song. Clicking on the play button will bring up a small browser window that will immediately start streaming your song. If you enter the name of an artist rather than a song title as your search query, Google will present a handful of popular songs by that artist with multiple ‘play’ buttons.
Here’s what the results page looks like, when multiple songs are being presented:
The new feature is being powered by two entirely different services: Lala, the innovative music site that lets people buy ‘web songs’ for ten cents, and iLike, the popular streaming music and artist hub that was recently acquired by MySpace. In an interesting twist, iLike’s appearance in OneBox will be short-lived — MySpace branded widgets will soon be taking their place. This is an important step in MySpace’s transition to being seen as a media/content hub rather than a pure social network. MySpace is also leveraging some of the new features it has recently rolled out since the iLike acquisition, including its artist dashboard and extensive library of music videos — you’ll be able to jump to a music video for a song directly from MySpace’s Onebox results (this is impressive given that the site only launched those services a week ago).
Likewise, this is also a massive win for Lala. We’ve been big fans of Lala since the site relaunched back in October 2008 with a unique business model that lets users build their music libraries in the cloud for cheap — you can purchase an entire streaming version of an album for around 80 cents, or 10 cents per song. The service’s only problem has been establishing traction, and this will certainly help with that. Expect the service’s userbase to see a big jump as millions of people on Google are exposed to Lala for the first time.
The joint partnership comes with a few quirks. Google will basically be doing a coin toss with each eligible query to determine which service will be serving up the widget. That will help the service distribute load and perhaps leaves the door open for Google to include multiple other music services, but I’m not sure it will provide the best user experience — some users may get confused when a feature in one widget isn’t available in the other.
Google VP of Search Products and User Experience kicked off the event,talking about how Google has expanded its search offerings over time, with Images (2201), Book (2003) and Maps (2007). “Music” is one of Google’s top ten searches of all time, as is “lyrics”. But it hasn’t always been easy to actually find music, which is why Google is looking to offer full song streaming directly from Google.
Google has also partnered with Gracenote to provide full lyric search — if you type in the lyrics from a portion of a song, they’ll identify the song. Song purchasing partners include imeem, Rhapsody, and Pandora, who will help with music discovery.
Google passed the baton off to MySpace, with MySpace Music President Courtney Holt outlining how much growth MySpace Music has seen and how happy the site is to be working with Google. Ali Partovi, iLike’s former CEO (and MySpace’s current SVP Business Development) took the stage, first taking the time to congratulate MySpace on acquiring iLike. He was joking, but what he says has some truth to it: MySpace made an offer on iLike before iLike could talk about the Google partnership, which iLike had been working on for a long time. In other words, MySpace lucked out with the deal.
Lala’s Bill Nguyen next to the stage, saying that Lala has always been about finding music, and then discovering more that you might like. He says that for the last ten years, music has been about business models, not discovery. Once you wind up on Lala, you can follow other users and see what they’re listening to.
The new feature will be gradually rolling out to users, with a small percentage (1-5%) having access today and rolling out gradually over the next couple days to everyone in the US.
Here’s the Lala player:
Here’s MySpace’s widget (you’ll be seeing an iLike widget temporarily, but eventually they’ll shift over to look like this):
How long before Google bypasses these providers to sell music direct to consumers?
Please, TC, put US ONLY label on top of all the US ONLY news!
“The new feature will be gradually rolling out to users, with a small percentage (1-5%) having access today and rolling out gradually over the next couple days to everyone.”
Correction – US only for the moment according to official Google Blog post.
Thanks Sam. The Techcrunch writers are pretty slack when it comes to mentioning geographic restrictions on services that it reports on. C’mon! It only takes one sentence!
Interesting – the music: search modifier now takes me to http://www.goog.../landing/music/ which shows Pandora and Rhapsody as partners as well…could there be more to this than the initial “stream from search” version?
This service really sucks! Poor user experience.
Ahh this whole thing sucks. I know an indie band out in Nor Cal that has the song “Song of Santa Cruz”. So I search in One Box(Stupid Name) for “Song of Santa Cruz” and it does not come up! Ok so I tried the example up above by entering in “Use Somebody” and there was no small play button ready for me to click. If I search for Kings of Leon it works. If you look at the home page http://www.goog.../landing/music/ it tells you “Search for Artists, Albums or Artists and a song”. Now if I return to the first search and enter in the band name of MySpace caldecottmusic I do not get a nice little button for the Song of Santa Cruz but I get a link to their MySpace page. Ok so what gives??? How is this really a music search service!
So put the user experience aside, the service does not even work in my opinion. And it does not good for people looking for new independent artists.
It would have been nice if they would have integrated to BandCamp, ReverbNation and a few other sites along with some up and comers like MusicXray, MixCloud and SoundCloud who have a bunch of new indie artists.
Looks like Myspace must have really liked Lala’s player:
http://www.tech...he-screenshots/
They totally copied it!
Hasn’t Yahoo been doing this for a while? Or am I missing some magic feature?
Yup, I just commented on another post that Yahoo has been doing this for ages and even has a Yahoo Music property.
TC has 2 Google Music posts on the front page right now, and have done atleast 3 more before, as if this is the best thing since sliced bread. All without a single mention of Yahoo.
I don’t really care for Yahoo, but if Techcrunch is omitting relevant facts like these in areas I’m aware of, then they must also be omitting relevant facts in other areas that I’m not aware of. Which makes TC a little less comprehensive as an information source.
Very good point Damon!
“…with Images (2201)…”
2201…? ;)
I’m content with Spotify + Last.fm at the moment!
im content with spotify, grooveshark, and jango. Who needs these other services.
It’s great that you’re content with Spotify, however it’s not available to US users. And it’s great that you’re content with Grooveshark and Jango, but they don’t have licenses from the label and are allowing you to listen to music illegally. My guess is those 2 won’t be around in 12 months.
another step into the content business for GOOG.
Widgets man, whod’a thunk?
They keep trying to make claim to music discovery yet their only demonstration is by referal from people you follow on the sites (assuming you sign up for them). One needs to discover music elsewhere before typing into the Google search bar.
Thing about online music…the sound quality sucks. Whether Pandora, Lastfm, Myspace, LaLa or Dodo or WeeWee or Poo Poo.
Are we really giving up sound quality for supposedly some cheap ‘conveniences’ and thrills?
I actually think that the quality of streaming has drastically increased other the past years. I’m quite amazed by Fairtilizer for instance. So I believe than sooner or later you’ll be able to enjoy something up to your standards.
One thing for sure: Music is going on the web, there’s no turning back.
Just made search even better.
i think this is quite handy if your listening to a song and you cant think of the artists name at all,i have something like that on my phone but it doesn’t give me the option to purchase it
Yawn….
You mean I get to search for music and then get to click through to yet another third party to buy?!!
Major advance guys..
When do I get to buy direct from the artist in ONE user experience?!
Where’s Lefsetz when you need him?