Myspace and Google Launch New Music Products
Google Inc. will launch music search pages next week and include ways for consumers to buy songs for download, according to people familiar with the matter.
The music pages will package images of musicians and bands, album artwork, links to news, lyrics, videos and song previews, along with a way to buy songs, they said.
Twitter updates on Google, Bing
Refusing to be upstaged, Google Inc.’s Internet search index will include public updates from Twitter’s communications stream.
Google announced the Twitter deal on its blog less than three hours after Microsoft Corp., whose search engine is called Bing, trumpeted its own Twitter partnership at a San Francisco technology conference.
MySpace to sell music videos
Social-networking site MySpace is using its joint venture with recording companies to launch a music video service that will pop into millions of profiles at rival Facebook as well.
Starting Wednesday, music videos that MySpace has licensed for its site will also run on the iLike music recommendation application, which the News Corp. unit acquired this month for $20 million.According to a recent posting by Wired, Google has been keeping mum about the details of what this will entail until the affair’s official announcement on October 28. Because of little information, rumours in the computer-nerd realm are popping up that it will be called either Google Music, Google Audio or OneBox.Spokespersons have also assured that Google will not become a music retailer. They will merely offer “enhanced music search with a streaming function.” Basically, that means you’ll get what you’re looking for, but the site will randomly pull streaming material from sources such as Lala, iLike or other participating services. At present, it is also known that all four major labels Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner will provide their wares. The wealth of independent content already hosted by Lala and iLike will likely be included as well.
