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Google Music: Search for songs, artists, CDs...
... then buy tunes from iTunes, Amazon and others

By Elinor Mills

Published: Thursday 15 December 2005

Google is set to launch a new service intended today to give searchers fast links to song lyrics, musical artists and CD titles on the main search results page.

Google Music will allow a user to type in the name of a band, artist, album or song in the main Google search bar special, and results will appear at the top, accompanied by icons of music notes, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

Items that can be purchased will have links to merchants for online ordering or downloading, she said. Initial merchant partners include Amazon.com, Apple's iTunes service, eMusic and RealNetworks Rhapsody.

Mayer said: "We aren't building out a music store. We are getting people to the iTunes store [and others]."

Results will also include links to supplemental Google web pages with more information about the music, including names of tracks on a CD and other CDs a band or artist has released. Google also will provide snippets of reviews from sites on the web and links to those sites.

Mayer said: "This has been one of the longstanding unfilled user needs. We saw a search need where we weren't providing users with the highest quality results that we could."

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com