Comments on: Google Music Search

Google Music Search

sarajflemming — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:45:36 -0800

Google music search... It had to happen sooner or later, right? Drop in a phrase, you get artist, album, and song title matches to choose from. Choose an artist, you get a list of their albums and on the album page you get a tracklisting and links to buy the album online, as well as links to do other artist/album/song-related Google searches.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:48:38 -0800

Your search - wrathchild america - did not match any documents. No pages were found containing "wrathchild america". Pfuj.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:49:09 -0800

It didn't work for me.

By: unSane

unSane — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:52:09 -0800

Searching classical is completely crap. Try 'Schoenberg' or 'Appalachian Spring'. 'Pernice Brothers' worked surprisingly well tho.

By: Triplanetary

Triplanetary — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:54:32 -0800

Pretty nice how they have woven in reviews. And they have album lists for even somewhat obscure artists like Toyah. I will certainly use this. Thanks for the link, sarajflemming.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:55:21 -0800

This is awesome! "swingin-est song" turned up "Quarter to Three by Gary "U.S." Bonds. I never knew who that song was by or what it was called. And "If You Wanna Be Happy" is by Kid Creole & the Coconuts. Who knew?

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:55:41 -0800

It works quite well for industrial music.

By: Espy Gillespie

Espy Gillespie — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:55:49 -0800

This seems faster and slightly less cluttered than allmusic. If they could expand their database of artists to allmusic's level, I'd probably use it.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:55:56 -0800

And thanks!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:55:58 -0800

I now know that there are (at least) 741 songs named "Wish You Were Here". Luckily Google's good with the DWIM, and returned the right result first. This has potential. It's far from perfect, though, as the first three comments indicate.

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:57:08 -0800

I really wish they'd do a related artists thing that actually works unlike the other ones out there.

By: Mach3avelli

Mach3avelli — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:58:29 -0800

God, what a joke. I hope they work out the kinks because every search is yielding nothing. How can anyone find any information on my top 50 albums of 2005 with this thing?

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:58:32 -0800

Searching for "the middle east" does successfully turn up Stormtroopers of Death. That's something, I guess. faster and slightly less cluttered than allmusic. Well, "faster than allmusic" is damning with faint praise, don't you think?

By: prettyboyfloyd

prettyboyfloyd — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:01:32 -0800

Music...pah...I'm still holding my breath for their calendar. Hear that google? We want calendar.

By: Elpoca

Elpoca — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:07:55 -0800

I SEARCHED FOR SOME OBSCURE BAND JUST TO PROVE A POINT AND GOOGLE COULDN'T FIND IT.

By: Todd Lokken

Todd Lokken — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:08:10 -0800

I wish I had a tool similar to this to search the thousands of songs on my PC.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:09:04 -0800

Does it show me where to find torrents?

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:12:43 -0800

Plutor - you weren't really trying to find that, were you? I agree that this has some potential, and of course that it will need some fleshing out to be truly great.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:13:18 -0800

I searched for some obscure band (with a relatively generic name, even) and it came back right on the first result. Am I right to think that whether or not a Google Music Search can find the band your looking for depends on that band's internet presence?

By: hyperizer

hyperizer — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:13:26 -0800

Seems pretty incomplete. I still prefer discogs.com.

By: roadmonkey

roadmonkey — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:15:58 -0800

It's pretty good, I imagine since it's fairly new there are some bugs to work out. If they can incorporate a lyric search, that'd be a little better. For now I think I'll stick with allmusic, but it'll be a close second

By: Dormant Gorilla

Dormant Gorilla — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:17:05 -0800

MusicPlasma is good too...

By: ktrey

ktrey — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:21:59 -0800

God, what a joke. I hope they work out the kinks because every search is yielding nothing. I didn't have any trouble finding them. I kid.

By: roadmonkey

roadmonkey — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:23:15 -0800

I like MusicPlasma, If I'm bored with some of the stuff I'm listening to and want to find new music that might be good.

By: fungible

fungible — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:23:50 -0800

Mach3avelli: You're my kind of music geek. Start an MP3 blog, please.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:26:44 -0800

Interesting that it's not labeled Beta, like most Google gubbins. Well, faintly interesting. I'll stick with Discogs.com for relatively obscure stuff, but this is pretty snappy if it's heard of the band in question.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:29:54 -0800

soyjoy: "Plutor - you weren't really trying to find that, were you?" Well, no, not really. Your search does come up with the right result, but then again so does a normal Google search with my original search term. If standard Google can find it, why can't Music Man Google?

By: roadmonkey

roadmonkey — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:34:49 -0800

Plutor: I think the idea is to search for albums or artists, not lyrics, which is unfortunate and not much harder to implement.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:39:32 -0800

Only works for shitty music.

By: sarajflemming

sarajflemming — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:41:48 -0800

Yeah, I like discogs.com, too. For one thing, there is a boatload more information for artists and albums. Plus you get the label on which a given release was...released. And you can add comments and the like. It's a start though, this Google music search.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:48:35 -0800

Mach3avelli, nice list. I'm shocked, however, that you don't have The Drift's Travels in Constants release on there. It kicks that EitS CD's ass, easy.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:50:33 -0800

I typed in a few obscure lyrics/titles, and zilch. Where are they going with this? To offer their services to MP3 vendors? Amazon and B&N problably don't need them, so, what's the profit model?

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:58:26 -0800

Where are they going with this? Google's profit model across all of their search services is to accompany search results with advertising.

By: wfrgms

wfrgms — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:00:22 -0800

Hey, if it works better and faster than AllMusic I'm all over it.

By: kozad

kozad — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:12:11 -0800

The musicplasma map is great, and searching discogs.com delivered way more results than Google Music but made me feel like a total music geek.

By: the cydonian

the cydonian — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:13:02 -0800

Meets my standard of sufficiently obscure band, but I suppose 'obscurity' here should be defined as a function of locale, and not necessarily of the net. (Meaning, I realise that just because local music stores don't carry these guys' CD's doesn't mean the band is necessarily obscure on the net) That said, rather funky to see that they've tied-in albums and lyrics as well; if only they can somehow put some samples for each song, for instance, it'd be great!

By: kurumi

kurumi — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:13:02 -0800

What I'd like to see is a way to input a series of notes or chords and get a list of exact matches (if any) and close matches. For example, enter in a bass line of "e e f# g f# g f# e", and the results would look something like: Roundabout - Yes Love Machine - The Miracles (Approximate matches: Maneater - Hall & Oates) (Very approximate matches: Dies Irae Charlie Brown theme - Vince Guaraldi) There are some search engines similar to this: classical (Java), where you click piano keys to describe your tune; and an ASCII description language for music, with a search engine. Ideally, Google Music 2 would be broad and comprehensive, with the following bits of smarts: - search on chord progressions, modes, polyphony, key and time signatures, meter changes - recognize and associate patterns in different-sounding tunes (e.g. guitar riff in Sheryl Crow's "If It Makes You Happy" = slower version of riff from Rolling Stones' "Happy"; or Sting's "Russians" borrowing from Holst's "Suite in Eb for Military Band")

By: |n$eCur3

|n$eCur3 — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:13:21 -0800

I like last.fm. Has been discussed before in the blue. What does it do? Using a plugin for either itunes, winamp, windows media, etc. it sends mp3 meta tags to a database as you listen to your music. Meanwhile, an algorithm calculates your closest neighbors based on your listening history. Think musicplasma + amazon + friendster. All you have to do is get over the fact that they are collecting a ton of information about you. In fact, why hasn't google purchased them yet?

By: TimeFactor

TimeFactor — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:16:51 -0800

Your search - "Excuse me while I kiss this guy" - did not match any documents. C'mon, everybody knows what song that's from.

By: vkxmai

vkxmai — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:24:06 -0800

Hey, if it works better and faster than AllMusic I'm all over it. I agree. I was delighted to find that it even listed Bogdan Raczynski.

By: shoepal

shoepal — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:32:13 -0800

Google stands to make a good chunk of referral change with this.

By: Marnie

Marnie — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:34:15 -0800

Google House Key Search: still mired in R&D

By: stratastar

stratastar — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:52:43 -0800

lol @ fungible

By: aaronetc

aaronetc — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:56:42 -0800

Seems OK to me, given the way Google tends to launch late alphas as early betas. The extra search links it gives you with album listings are a joke, though -- if you look up a listing for Asia, for example, then click "Artist websites," all you're getting is a Google search for "Asia." Same with news and image searches -- WEAK. The redesigned All Music Guide is a beast and a half, but it still beats this.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 13:08:46 -0800

Google's music search does link to a lyrics search, which is interesting consider the flap over that recently.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 14:03:21 -0800

This would be cool if it actually turned up music files. Instead, I search for "Pink Floyd," and get a bunch of websites related to Pink Floyd. Gee, this is really useful. I can't use normal Google search and get roughly the same thing. /snark

By: kryptondog

kryptondog — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 14:42:06 -0800

Mach3avelli: Ack. Every album you listed that I recognized I liked. Now I'm going to have to go read up on and find simples of bands from that list. (Thanks, I was hungry for new music)

By: krix

krix — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:42:26 -0800

Aldo Nova! Of course! *slaps forehead*

By: davem

davem — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:36:22 -0800

Todd Loken: There is a plug-in for Google Desktop that will index and search music files on your PC. Actually, there's more than one plug-in.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:49:43 -0800

God, what a joke. This from the guy who uses the term "electro-indie-pop" and "neopost-rock" without a hint of sarcasm.

By: SoftRain

SoftRain — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:15:33 -0800

It turned up my semi-obscure band, but it doesn't have their latest album. So, half marks.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 20:14:50 -0800

Your search - "Excuse me while I kiss this guy" - did not match any documents. Duh, that's 'cause you misspelled it. Everybody knows it's supposed to be "Scuse me..."

By: Todd Lokken

Todd Lokken — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:15:41 -0800

Davem....thanks!

By: stilgar

stilgar — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:27:08 -0800

it does work very well for industrial music....do you think for some reason google techs really like vnv nation and nine inch nails...