BigChampagne's Ultimate Chart (a/o February 10th):
1. “What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger),” Kelly Clarkson
2. “Set Fire to the Rain,” Adele
3. “Turn Me On,” David Guetta
4. “Rack City,” TYGA
5. “Good Feeling,” Flo Rida
6. “Smooth Criminal (Glee Cast Version),” Glee Cast
7. “Young, Wild & Free,” Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa
8. “Domino ,” Jessie J
9. “Sexy and I Know It,” LMFAO
10. “Ass Back Home ,” Gym Class Heroes
The ghosts of music industry past would have trouble understanding Google's latest initiative. But on Wednesday, past and present were juxtaposed as Google detailed its revamped music search results. Inside the historic Capitol Records Building in Hollywood - host to recording sessions for Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Les Paul, and the Beastie Boys - executives from Google and a large number of partnering companies detailed the newly-organized results set. "There's a lot of history in this building," said Syd Schwartz, senior vice president of Global Digital Marketing at EMI.
Then, it was off to the details,
including a confirmed list of partnering companies. So who's in? The
group includes MySpace (and the recently-acquired
iLike), Lala, Gracenote, Imeem, Pandora, Rhapsody, EMI Music, Sony
Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group,
according to slide one
of the presentation. Those partners will combine to power a
neat-and-clean results set that includes images, on-demand streams, and
links to lyrics, videos, and plenty of other exploration options. The
expanded results are currently being rolled throughout the United
States, and Google indicated that an international expansion is part of
the broader roadmap.
The partners come to the table with a broad range of goals. According to Google vice president of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer, music is another stop in a chain of category-specific initiatives. That includes images (implemented 2001), books (2003), and maps (2005), all responses to expressed user preferences. "We see millions of queries daily that are music-related," Mayer relayed.
Of course, the partner services are more than happy to satisfy that demand. "This offers an incredibly powerful front-end to our experience," said MySpace Music head Courtney Holt, flanked by Ali Partovi, head of iLike. "This will continue our amazing growth."
Oddly, Google's neat-and-clean results set will coexist alongside far wilder listings, including endless torrent links for similar content. But labels have successfully shifted a portion of file-trading energy towards authorized, on-demand streaming, a trend that will now be furthered by Google. "Once we can expose people to these great services, we can change behavior and make the legitimate side of things the place to be," said Steve Savoca of Domino Recording Company during a roundtable discussion.
But the biggest beneficiaries are fans, who now have even more options to sample, explore and discover music. That includes assembled on-demand streams, lyrics, and videos, as well as unauthorized results further down the page. Perhaps that is the most ironic aspect of this release - after all, Google aggregates more torrents than the Pirate Bay or Mininova, simply by the nature of its platform.
Report by publisher Paul Resnikoff from the Capitol Records Building in Hollywood.
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