Google To Announce New Music Service Next Week
There are rumors, and a few facts, floating around the internets that Google will be announcing a music searching service next Wednesday. The service will be called either “Google Music,” “Google Audio,” or “OneBox,” depending on who you ask, and will be premiered at an event at Capitol Records with performances by One Republic, Members of Linkin Park, Dead By Sunrise & Others. Partners in the new service, LaLa and iLike will also be present.
Some are reporting that the service will function like Google China’s Audio search, which allows users to find and download audio content for free. That’s doubtful stateside, especially given the partners of the service, iLike and LaLa. What the service will actually shake out to be will be a search engine that lets users type in the name of a song or artist, and then stream said song via either iLike or LaLa.
The brilliant side of it on the Big G’s end is that they shouldn’t have to work out too many legalities with the RIAA since iLike and LaLa will already be running interference for them. With said partnership, users can expect to find all of the content currently on LaLa, as well as iLike, which was just picked up by MySpace a few months back.
You can currently search for music on Google by typing “music:” before a search, but it does not allow direct streaming and is more of a power user function for the standard search engine.
sources: Eliot Van Buskirk | Michael Arrington
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