Google OneBox To Offer Free Songs

Last week Google announced the launch of a new search feature, called Music Onebox, which allows you to stream songs for free via partner services Lala and MySpace’s iLike (as well as Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody). What does it mean to you, as a listener?

Obviously, finding a song of a favorite artist is getting easier than ever. Not only you can listen to a tune with one click directly from a search results page, now you don’t even need to type in the name of the song to find it (you can use a line from the lyrics, for example). A post on the official Google blog lists the smart new search capabilities.

The downsides? First of all, due to the licensing issues some of the songs will only include 30-second samples. Secondly, the service will be rolled out only in the US, so far.

There are surprising advantages though, according to the recent TechCrunch report. The blog reveals that Music Onebox will feature exclusive songs from “a number of well known artists.” Over 20 acts are said to be offering tunes that can only be found through Google search, and some of these tracks will be given away for free.

On the business side of things, Google is not working directly with record labels for licensing, but the company says that the labels approve the new feature, according to DMW. “Everybody’s been very supportive. Indeed, our business model is to improve the search experience with the help of streaming partners, which offer interesting business models of their own,” R.J. Pittman, director of product management for Google, told Reuters.

“Google is the most powerful internet partner that these music services could have,” Michael Nash, Warner Music Group’s executive vice president of digital strategy and business development, told Wired.com. “We think that it’s potentially very significant from the standpoint generating revenue and gives a big boost to legitimate digital music services.”

Should bands that are not among those 20 “well known artists” care? Hypebot just reported that indie artists and labels might be able to control and improve the content of their search results with OneBox.

Check out the OneBox in action in the official video here, or on Google's Discover Music page.

Courtesy of Dotted Music.

Comments

[Guitar_Jester]

May be useful.

[EREV777]

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

[santa_man99]

Who cares? We've had streaming services for years, playlist.com, myspace.com, plus half the world is pirating anyway.

[Comeback Kiddd]

purevolume.com is my favorite for music streams. Even includes free downloads most of the time :]

[pinata89]

hmm..doubt it will get as much use as Google thinks it will.

[inlovewithmusic]

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

and offers countless other free products. Yeah they do make a TON of money even though most of their major services are free....but in the capitalist era where companies like micorsoft and apple charge a ton of money for products which are not even the best available on the market, Google is definitely the better of the lot ...

[euan_soad]

inlovewithmusic wrote:

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

and offers countless other free products. Yeah they do make a TON of money even though most of their major services are free....but in the capitalist era where companies like micorsoft and apple charge a ton of money for products which are not even the best available on the market, Google is definitely the better of the lot ...

THIS.

[godberry]

google is planning to take over the world

[megadethdefying]

godberry wrote:

google is planning to take over the world

the last stand off will be google versus tescos...who will win?

[KenjiBeast]

Pandora is still the one for me.

[justinb904]

inlovewithmusic wrote:

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

-your first point is completely subjective, and in all honesty I don't like google because unless I'm looking for something specific most the search results are completely irrelevant to what I'm trying to find and there is way too much advertising
-to your second point, regardless of how fast the web browser is my internet connection isn't getting any faster, plus it being FREE doesn't make any difference because most web browsers, at least all the ones I know of, are free
-even if Google's os is better than windows and osx combined, unless it's got native support for programs written for other operating systems they'll have a hard time convincing people to switch

all that being said I could care less about google, I won't have any need to use their music streaming service

[JLJohnson_21]

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

wow, talk about a fanboy! shouldn't your username be inlovewithgoogle?

[McNuttynz]

wow, talk about a fanboy! shouldn't your username be inlovewithgoogle?

LOL loved that

[chrisdazzo]

Yeah, half the world pirates, and there are plenty of free streaming sites already. This is like TPB for streaming music. How stupid.

[bendystraw]

JLJohnson_21 wrote:

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

wow, talk about a fanboy! shouldn't your username be inlovewithgoogle?

Because somebody said something incorrect, and was corrected, the corrector is a "fanboy"? You're dumb.

Checked.

I can kinda start to see a flame war brewing. Watch it, guys.

[guitar_mad_ali]

this looks like a crappy version of spotify
30 seconds? spotify has the whole song, and for one 30 second advert every 10 minutes who can complain (just turn your speakers down for a while)
this is gonna suck

[darkfire_storm]

yeah, let's all bash on a free service.

seriously, if you have something better, use it. for others, this may be what they've been waiting for. it's in the interest of competition, and if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. no one's making you.

[RockGuitar92]

Good for Google.

[thedarkblues06]

darkfire_storm wrote:

yeah, let's all bash on a free service.

seriously, if you have something better, use it. for others, this may be what they've been waiting for. it's in the interest of competition, and if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. no one's making you.

I agree. Google = free. free = good for wallet. Good for wallet = more CDs to buy.

to all the haters, stfu.

[TheWickerMan666]

guitar_mad_ali wrote:

this looks like a crappy version of spotify
30 seconds? spotify has the whole song, and for one 30 second advert every 10 minutes who can complain (just turn your speakers down for a while)
this is gonna suck

They'll only have thirty seconds on songs where they can't get the necessary copyrights.

This seems like a good idea. People who're complaining: you don't have to use it, do you?
Also, as Google owns the 'tube, it might mean some record companies will lay off their 'WE WANT THIS VIDEO MUTED' thing as well, if they see that legitimate music streaming can work properly.

Anyway, nothing bad can come of this, can it?

[JLJohnson_21]

Because somebody said something incorrect, and was corrected, the corrector is a "fanboy"? You're dumb.

guess we have a lot of fanboys here i use google too but i don't sound like a pr rep for them.

[MoonBoots432]

pinata89 wrote:

hmm..doubt it will get as much use as Google thinks it will.

Since I've known it's been around I've used it at least once a day.

[metal_al73]

yay google

but srsly this service will no doubt suck when in comparison to spotify

[deafening]

waste of money

[Legendaryhero7]

Remember that episode of south park with wal-mart....
lets not let google get to that

[Synyster915]

Comeback Kiddd wrote:

purevolume.com is my favorite for music streams. Even includes free downloads most of the time :]

Thanks for showing me that lol.

[i_am_metalhead]

inlovewithmusic wrote:

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

and offers countless other free products. Yeah they do make a TON of money even though most of their major services are free....but in the capitalist era where companies like micorsoft and apple charge a ton of money for products which are not even the best available on the market, Google is definitely the better of the lot ...

- Google's search engine sucks]

[i_am_metalhead]

inlovewithmusic wrote:

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

and offers countless other free products. Yeah they do make a TON of money even though most of their major services are free....but in the capitalist era where companies like micorsoft and apple charge a ton of money for products which are not even the best available on the market, Google is definitely the better of the lot ...

- Google's search engine isn't that great. Most of the time it brings up things that aren't even relevant to what I was searching for.

- Sorry to tell you but Google Chrome pretty much sucks. There are other browsers that are just as fast and have better security.

- I highly doubt Google's OS will be able to compete with Windows. Even if it remotely good, there are so many programs that exist today that Google's OS won't be able to support.

Google's coming into this whole music streaming thing pretty late in the ball game. I really don't see how this is going to be any better than the countless streaming sites that already exist.

[Tedward]

i_am_metalhead wrote:

inlovewithmusic wrote:

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

and offers countless other free products. Yeah they do make a TON of money even though most of their major services are free....but in the capitalist era where companies like micorsoft and apple charge a ton of money for products which are not even the best available on the market, Google is definitely the better of the lot ...

- Google's search engine isn't that great. Most of the time it brings up things that aren't even relevant to what I was searching for.

- Sorry to tell you but Google Chrome pretty much sucks. There are other browsers that are just as fast and have better security.

- I highly doubt Google's OS will be able to compete with Windows. Even if it remotely good, there are so many programs that exist today that Google's OS won't be able to support.

Google's coming into this whole music streaming thing pretty late in the ball game. I really don't see how this is going to be any better than the countless streaming sites that already exist.

Actually Google IS the best search engine. It's all about using the right key words. Obviously it can't read your mind, but then no Search Engine can (I'm looking at you, Bing).

And also, Google isn't getting into Music Streaming. It's combining and making good use of already created Music streaming sites, like Imeem (which is great), and myspace.

[blizzboy]

Google's search engine is up to your preference.
Chrome is also up to your preference.
Google's OS is being debated before it's out, but either way, it's still up to preference.

Stop bickering, people. Spitting your opinions as facts. Just be cool

[liam1107]

megadethdefying wrote:

godberry wrote:

google is planning to take over the world

the last stand off will be google versus tescos...who will win?

I'm banking on google, simply because i work for Mr Tesco and i hope that he will catch a heart attack...

C'MON GOOGLE!!!

[maroon5mustdie]

Thirty seconds?.... Can't you get that on iTunes for free too?

[Nocturne12]

I think the point of the whole thing is the fact that it's amalgamating all of the various other sites that do the same thing, making it that much easier for the user. Google's always been about simplicity, and I doubt they would screw this up.
What I'm worried about is Google forgetting about the little guy (ie. all my favorite bands). Sure, Warner Bros. is on board, but that doesn't mean shit to me. I've seen too much of that kind of thing lately to be reassured that smaller labels "might" have any control over anything.

[larrytheguitar]

Only in the US? Lame.

[justinb904]

Let's just hope they don't do like what they did with their search engine and take payments from bands/labels for higher rankings in the search results. They make enough money to cover the cost of youtube(which loses money believe it or not) so I'm sure they don't need to but you never know.

Unless they are streaming quality music formats rather than the super compressed music like myspace and other music streaming services do, you couldn't pay me to listen to it anyway.

Checked.

[progressjp]

deafening :
waste of money

this guy retarded much, its a free service, so all you people who are like "oh its useless its crap because its google" its just a neat lil gizmo so what if its been done before, search engines have been done before, but there are still ones being made

[Nite`]

inlovewithmusic wrote:

EREV777 wrote:

gee, google needs to get a life. but ehhh yeah it might be useful

You might want to think twice before you bash a company that

- owns the best search engine ever made
- offers the faster browser ever made for FREE
- is building an OS that will rival Windows and will be available for free

and offers countless other free products. Yeah they do make a TON of money even though most of their major services are free....but in the capitalist era where companies like micorsoft and apple charge a ton of money for products which are not even the best available on the market, Google is definitely the better of the lot ...

- i quite like google's search engine
- i think Safari is actually faster but browsers are preference, i personally like firefox.
- Ubuntu linux in my opinion the new version is actually better than windows 7 - the only problem and i fear this will be the Google OS problem too (don't really know much about it too be honest though) is the compatibility. it's the only reason why i have windows.

to be fair i think this will be quite successful as the average user won't know much about the other streaming alternatives and with google heavily advertising this i think it could be quite popular

just my opinion though

[koirala]

TORRENTS ROCK

[koirala]

But so does google

[beatreebor]

shit off google.

[perilouspete]

megadethdefying wrote:

godberry wrote:

google is planning to take over the world

the last stand off will be google versus tescos...who will win?

Edit* Google vs. Taco Bell

[therevenant2811]

as many of you have said on the topic this is a pretty pointless feature and is just going to be a headache to the networkers and coders at google. since we have had streaming capabilities for years now. i think google just wants to be able to get in on this and if thats the purpose, the more power to them. i personal love google and would die without it. Anybody have a release date on the Google Os?? if so mssg me.