Google announced they have made enhancements to their movie search feature. The enhancements include:

• Detailed movie pages
• Genre filters
• New map view
• Enhanced movie portal page

Here are some screen shots of the new movie results from Google:

The expected Google Music Search is real, and our Google Music Search 2.0 Launches With Musical “OneBox” story provides the play-by-play of how it works. Be sure to read that! From me, the color commentary out of today’s launch event at Capitol Records in Hollywood. I’ll be live blogging the news.

We’re expecting some musical stars, including guests from OneRepublic, Dead By Sunrise, Linkin Park and Mos Def. I’ll do my best to keep up, given my lack of popular musical culture makes me the butt of jokes to those who know me well. Have mercy, OK?

And it’s 4:04pm, with loud music playing, and a stranger intermix of tech folks and music folks. And nothing happening. So just stay patient. It’s “The Joker” playing, by the way. You know, midnight toker?

OK, a little video and Syd Schwartz, senior vice president of EMI takes the stage. Talking abou the history here in the Capitol tower some of the big artists. Me, I’m just afraid we’ll all die. Because it’s the only landmark building in LA and it always gets blown up in disaster movies.

Now Marissa Mayer from Google. “It’s clear to us that for our users, music holds a special and deal place.” Or a quote very similar to that.

Google mission to organize info. But quickly realized they needed more than web pages to do this. So image search in 2001. Book search in 2003. In 2005, Google Maps to search the physical world. 2007, Universal Search blended this all together.

How’s music fit in. Top 10 searches involve lyrics and musics. Hey, there’s a Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore movie called Music & Lyrics. It’s awesome.

Marissa’s routine is to listen in the car, memorize a snippet of a song, then going back and searching for it. But that’s not easy. So, “why can’t Google make music more intuitive and easy to find online?” So excited about the new service today (HEY, READ OUR ARTICLE UP THERE IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH FOR MORE ON THAT). Only service that lets you play an entire song. And Gracenote allows them to do full lyric search [don't ask about all those sites listing lyrics illegally in some cases in Google's regular results].

Now RJ Pittman to demo. Music in his blood, mother is a music teacher. One of his favorite bands is OneRepublic. But is it one word? Ryan from the band he jokes tells him that’s right. But excited you can do two words and find it that way. Now showing how you can get music one click away. Hey, OneRepublic is pretty good. I should download them. From Amazon, cause I like how they’re easy and DRM free. Wait, I mean from one of the Google partners that are involved with it. Don’t worry, see our article, Google doesn’t earn off that itself.

Searches for a lyric from a Police song. No, not that one. You were thinking Roxanne. Not that one. Long lyric, finds a OneBox, plays music. People applaud.

“If you ever wondered what a search result sounded like on Google, this is it,” he says, as he plays Dead By Sunrise.

Marissa’s back up and talking about MySpace and LaLa for live music streaming, music vendors imeem, Pandora & Rhapsody. And Gracenote for Lyrics.

Now Ali Partove SVP of BizDev for MySpace and Courtney Holt president of MySpace Music. Talking how they’ll be able to better get news out about tours. How the social graph can be useful to the music experience. Music has helped MySpace grow and this will help even more.

“Music on Google Search. How F-ing cool is that,” says Holt. Except he didn’t have that dash in there :) Hey, we’re at a rockish event gang.

Now Holt showing popup you get when you click on Google music results, allows you to by the MP3, watch the official video or get concert info. If you clickthru, you get to a dedicated music page at MySpace for the artist. Now he’s giving props to the Google team for building. “In my 7 years in digital music, coming up for an arrangement…” where consumer, artist, rightsholders and many others win is hard, but says Google’s done it. “the main beneficiary is the consumer” getting a better music experience.

Now Bill Nguyen, chairman and founder of LaLa. Or lala, I guess. “We all begin music discovery at the same place, Google Search.” Well no, but OK. And now he’s showing three bands that haven’t gotten discovered more. First is Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Sharpe. They sound nice. I’ll download them.

Shows how on lala, you can go to their page and see who has discovered them as a fan, see other music that person likes, you can follow folks like Twitter. It’s Twitter for music lovers.

All built on the web because he hates MP3, doesn’t like to organize them. Me, I love them. I want to own my music hardcopy, I guess. But he shows how you can buy the music on their service, what you already own. I assume you can download. I assume you can then put on your MP3 player. Right?

Showing how you can preview a song and buy it if you like it. I kind of do this on Amazon already. But I think you can listen to the entire thing. So that’s cool. Now showing what looks like an iTunes to organize your music. But not probably as sucky as iTunes. And from lala, on the web.

RJ’s back. Goal was to keep the product simple. Marissa taught him sometimes greatest challenge is restraint in features. Make it so if you know a few words, boom, you can get that music in a click. [Hey, what about being able to sing it. Kind of like Shazaam. But there are other services out there like that, too. Let's have that, too!]

When you’re over 25, you stop listening to new music he’s heard. Yeah. [But then when you're past 40, you start feeling like you'd better listen again or you'll be really out of it. Just saying.] But he’s excited this will let people discover more. [Except, I've gotta say, there's not a lot of discovery here. It's all search. It works because you KNOW an artist or KNOW a lyric you heard. It's not suggesting new stuff you don't know].

Now a roundtable. We have Mos Def, joining Wendy Nussbaum of Universal Music Group, Steve Savoca of Domino Recording, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic and Syd Schwartz from EMI.

Asks Mike about how things have changed over time. Mike talks about how Linkin Park had a different name, found the name Lincoln Park but couldn’t get that domain. “We thought, this could be an important thing to have a dot.com of our name.” So we literally changed the name of the band to get the URL that would give us the most direct link to our fans. [and yes, I know he also said this yesterday at the 140 Twitter conference. He mentioned to everyone here he told the story there, too].

RJ asks if they thought about getting non-US domain names for the band, like in France. Mike says thought about that.

Wendy now talking about how this will lead people to legitimate sources of music [and I hear Apple thinking now ugh, maybe you know holding all our legit music behind that absurd you've gotta have iTunes to find it AppleWall is something we ought to take down].

RJ asks about the idea of seeing what people share, he’d love to see what Mos is listening to, as Linkin Park and OneRepublic. Wendy says basically sure, always thinking about new ways.

Syd now talking about how he wanted to build out his jazz collection, going to Tower Records and seeing Donald Fagan of Steely Dan. Followed him around as he’s a jazz expert. “So trying to not look stalkerish,” he followed him for 1 1/2 hours. “I discoverd some great stuff .. but I look at what’s been presented here today and think wow, I could have saved myself a restraining order.”

Mos asked about what gets him excited in terms of the web and technology with what he does.

Says sure, for all artists, the internet and Google and YouTube and things like that have been incredible important. And now a billion cameras going off with high speed shutters. Thought we were all digital these days.

“Me, to be perfectly honest, I’m a child of hte 70s, so I walk around every day thinking I’m in Buck Rodgers or Battlestar Galactica … I’m still really getting over the cell phone.”

See now similar to early 20th century with new tech, a wide open field. … “I’m still getting over email. Wow, it’s incredible.” Excited at opp for independents and how quickly they can turn music around.

Steve says excited to have independent have a seat at the table. “This means a lot to us. What we do is niche.” Digital is 50% of their business and primarily get people through word of mouth. “This is a zero friction music experience.” Hear about an artist, hear the artist. With things like lala and OneBox, feel new opportunities to get their music out

“We’ve got to change consumption behavior.” Need environment where people can access these things. When we can expose people to these great services we can change behavior and that the legitimate side of things is where to be.

Ryan talking about how he feels MySpace is what made their breakthrough. He got dropped same day as Katy Perry and Jonas Brothers from the same label. Audience goes wow, because even I know they’re all hot. Thought if he had to make poster and put them up, “I’m screwed.” Found MySpace thought it was perfect, free. Would search for everyone 18-22 on MySpace and emailed them when in town to get them out to concerts. “Were it not for MySpace … that would not happen if it weren’t for technology as it is [people coming out].” For Google, when type in a song until today are bittorrent illegal download sites. [which is kind of bad for Google, because if that's true, well, they're still listing all that stuff]. He’s excited that it literally focuses stuff.

OneRepublic has new album coming. Any new plans in the digital space? Yes, might do something with Twitter. “I don’t know what artists did 20 years ago .. did you rent out the Rainbow Room and throw a kegger.” I’m loving Ryan now, because he’s so totally using this entire new medium. “I kind of have two jobs, writing and producing .. I need things that won’t take up the whole day.” “It’s a blessing and a curse, because we have to be in 20 countries at once.”

Mike from Linkin Park says you’ll be able to see how they make their next album online.

And now we’re going to do Q&A.

How will this change industry in future? Courtney says Google has lots of queries but hasn’t been leading people to a legit experience. This gives consumer more uniformity. It actually gives the rightsholder more control, a way to make money.

Mike from Linkin Park, “I want as few steps as possible between me and that think I’m looking for, the band … I want to be able to find them amidst the noise.” This is what excites him most about this.

Bill talking about how this will let people hear more diverse music. “They’re going to do for music what they did for the web.”

What about outside the US and streaming. RJ says right, only US right now. Focus is to go heads down and tackle this market.

I asked Ryan and Courtney about how they’ve both mentioned there being illegit content on Google, and how that’s not going away, so what do the think Google should do. Or is being at the top of the list enough?

Ryan:

“I’m not entirely sure that it’s Google’s problem … I think it’s a huge step foward … first major company outside of a record label that filters through the noise … again that was the first thing that caught my attention. This is the first internet anything that does that … I don’t know how they did it. You’ve got people way smarter than us [says looking at Marissa and RJ of Google] … You didn’t have to do it. .. as for the fans … clicking on dead links [is bad] … now you’re playing the song two seconds after typing in a lyric.”

Courtney:

“The number one way for the music industry to battle piracy is to make the legitimate image options better … here what Google’s done is made … an extremely convenient experience … also the speed of it … google has had an enormous focus on making it really freakin fast … I honestly believe simply becasue it is more ocnvenient and it’s from a brand that’s more [recognized, I think, he said]” will get it used.

Question on costs. If this generates more listening, more costs? Mike for lala says “more listening is more buying.”

“They don’t want to talk about it … they’re not going to tell you” Mos says, as another question comes up about buying and selling and how the music reps haven’t wanted to get into that.

Mos also impressed that labels seem to have jumped because this is Google [idea that Google is being, versus Napster .. I'll try to find another live blog account that caught this part better]. Live blogging is hard, did I say that?

And that’s it, the announcements all done. Techmeme has massive related coverage, both live plus regular articles that will be coming. Check it out. And rock and roll, people! Heh.

Saying that it wants to bring music fans “closer to your favorite artists,” Google has added a new Music Search OneBox to its search results. The new OneBox includes content from partner sites such as MySpace, Pandora, Lala and others, and lets searchers listen to song clips right from Google’s search results page. Searchers should begin to see the new OneBox in the next 24 hours.

Google has had a music OneBox before, but it disappeared some time ago, perhaps in preparation for the launch of this new Music Search 2.0, as we’re calling it. There’s also a deeper search function that only surfaces music-related content and still appears to be active — see this U2 search, for example.

According to today’s announcement, searches for the name of an artist, album, or song will show the new OneBox in Google’s main search results. If you search for an artist or album name, the OneBox will include a set of four songs that are chosen algorithmically by the partner music site, not by Google. Each song will be linked to an audio clip that will play in a Flash-based pop-up window provided by the partner site. In some cases, the partner may provide one full play of the song before defaulting to a 30-second preview.

Google’s music OneBox will include links to these music partner sites to discover more information about your music-based search, and sometimes the links will help you discover music that’s related to your search. Contrary to recent rumors, you won’t see any links to purchase the songs — at least for now. Google’s RJ Pittman told us today that, while some of their music partners have a commerce element, the focus of Google’s new music search is information, not selling digital songs. In fact, there’s no commercial arrangement at all, we’re told, between Google and the music partner sites included in this launch.

In some ways, this is a case of Google playing catch-up. Yahoo already offers a music shortcut with better features. From Yahoo’s search results, you can listen to up to 25 full-length songs per month (via Rhapsody, which is also partnering with Google now) and watch full-length music videos from Yahoo! Music.

But this shortcut is only shown on Yahoo searches for artist names, not for album or song names. Yahoo used to offer a lyric-specific shortcut, too, but that appears to have disappeared.

Speaking of song lyrics…

This is where Google’s announcement gets really interesting. Many of us don’t know the name of the song or artist, but we remember a line or two from a song and we use that as our search query. Google’s new music search will try to divine when searchers have put song lyrics into the search box and surface the correct song. The Google blog post shows a search for the phrase “static silhouette somehow”, which returns a OneBox about the song “Rome” by Phoenix.

How does Google know if your search query is a song lyric or not?

Pittman says the algorithm will look at things like the popularity of the search term; if Google starts to see a lot of searches for a popular song or its lyrics, it’ll show the OneBox. He also says it’ll take “at least a phrase” to initiate the lyric search, and the more words in your query, the more likely Google can correctly identify it as a lyric search. Google has partnered with Gracenote for this lyric matching effort.

What about when more than one song contains the same lyric?

In situations like this, Pittman says Google will only show one matching song — at least for now — and that the music partner’s algorithm will determine which song is the best likely match.

But there’s obviously a lot of room for error here, with so many songs sharing similar titles and similar lyrics, not to mention new artists covering old songs and sometimes changing a lyric or two in the process. “There are lots of songs with lots of overlap, and we’ll have to continue to improve,” Pittman says. Google’s announcement today even acknowledges the challenge of identifying search queries as song lyrics and returning the right song: “In some instances, we may not return links to the song you’re looking for.”

What’s missing?

Google has partnered with well known music sites such as MySpace, Pandora, iMeem, and others, to help searchers discover more about their favorite artists. But, as I suggested on the call today, there’s a lot of musical information that Google isn’t surfacing in its new OneBox — information from the many excellent fan-based web sites, for example, or from intelligent music media sites and blogs.

Sure, I’m biased. In 1995, I created @U2, which is the oldest independent site on the web about U2. We’ve been honored by Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and countless others over the years. As I said today, I’ll put our U2 lyrics, band biographies, etc., up against these music portal sites any day of the week.

Google’s announcement says “there’s a lot of music out there in the world,” but by limiting its results to a handful of partner sites, Google is limiting how much of that information will be found in its new Music Search OneBox.

See also: Live Blogging From The Google Discover Music Launch Event, by Danny Sullivan

Google is reportedly about to launch a new music service in partnership with LaLa and iLike (MySpace).

— Update, October 28, 2009: This is now live. See our story, Google Music Search 2.0 Launches With Musical “OneBox” for more. —

According to TechCrunch, users will access the Google music service through search:

Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google’s existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today.

CNET reports the following:

The initiative is coming out of Google Search and is designed to organize everything a music fan may need when searching online for a favorite artist, the sources said.

The way One Box will work is that a person who keys in the names U2 or Coldplay, for example, will find a thumbnail photo of the artists, background information, as well as a listing of the music that they can preview, according to the sources.

There was rumor and speculation about Google launching a music-download service as far back as early 2006. And Google has offered fairly extensive music search since that time (though it’s buried):

An angle I haven’t yet seen discussed is the Android angle. Currently Android users can get music on their phones through a deal with Amazon’s music store. However this is a significant weakness of Android vs. the iPhone, which much more seamlessly integrates music and ringtone downloads into the mobile experience. Delivering music to mobile devices may become part of any such Google service, assuming TechCrunch has it right. We’ll see.

This is another potential way in which Google becomes even more of a direct competitor of Apple.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Postscript: We just received our own ticket/invitation to the launch event:

Reportedly the service will provide e-commerce links to Amazon and the iTunes music store, solving the mystery of the download question.

Music 2.0 has shared detailed screen captures and commentary on the launch of Google China Music Search. I personally cannot get to this site (”Sorry, Google is not your region provide you with the services they need” message appears”), but Music 2.0 does have screen captures and calls this Google service “more impressive” then many of the international counterparts.

Google China Music Search ranks music on the home page by some form of popularity metric. You can clearly search by artist name and other criteria. You can even download the DRM-free music in mp3 format at a rate of 192kbps. Google offers the ability to stream the music via a Flash player. Lyrics are also provided in a pop up window. The pages seem to contain advertisements but I am not sure if the revenue is shared with the musicians.

In February, Danny wrote a piece named Google To Fight Baidu In China With Legal Music Downloads? That article goes more into the other services available in China and some of the challenges Google will have in the Chinese market.

Baidu has been plagued with copyright lawsuits over music search in the past; the most recent news we have is that they beat the music labels in court.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson gave us a statement clarifying the ads in this application:

Google does not share in the revenue generated by advertising in connection with its Music Onebox product in China. All ads visible on the product in connection with the product run on Top100’s website and revenues from those ads are shared between Top100 and its music label and publisher partners.

One of the key weaknesses Google has seemed to face in growing market share in China has been the fact that many people turn to Baidu to download music. Now the company may be fixing this, reports the Wall Street Journal:

Two years after Google Inc. began a big push in China, Baidu.com Inc. continues to dominate the country’s Internet search market, thanks in significant part to a controversial and legally risky offering: searches for free, unlicensed music downloads.

Now, Google is preparing a counterstrike, according to people close to the situation. The U.S. search giant is in the late planning stages of a joint venture with a Chinese online music company that would permit it to provide free — licensed — music downloads in China.

The service, which is likely to offer access to tunes from three global music companies as well as dozens of smaller players, could start in the next several weeks barring any last-minute hiccups. The music pact marks a turning point in Google’s battle with Baidu to gain dominance in an Internet market that is soon expected to surpass the U.S. this year in number of users.

The report notes that 7 percent of Baidu’s traffic is from access to free music, but that Baidu has been a target of copyright actions because of this. Of course, just last month Baidu won a copyright case against it (Baidu Beats Music Labels In Music Copyright Case Again), so those copyright issues haven’t seemed to slow it down over the years. In contrast, Yahoo China in December lost a case (Yahoo China Loses Case On Linking To Unlicensed Music).

Things might change more, however. A global music trade group is targeting both Baidu and Yahoo with new cases asking for thousands of sites to be removed.

Google hasn’t been targeted in music cases, the Wall Street Journal says, since it hasn’t offered a music search feature. To avoid such actions, plans are said to involve files that are digitally watermarked. These files, from a variety of record labels, are already offered via Top100.cn. Google is said to be partnering with Top100.cn to provide enhanced search and other features.

For some background on the importance of music search to Baidu historically, the China Online Search Marketing Survey Report (PDF) in 2005 found that more people were searching at Google for web results, reference info, shopping, and business material than at Baidu. Baidu’s big search area was downloadable music. Similarly, a Keynote study in 2006 found that Google beat Baidu in many customer satisfaction areas, including general search quality, image search quality, and news search quality. But it was Baidu that ranked tops for music search quality.

For further discussion, see related stories on Techmeme.