With Lala Closing, Google Music Search May Use Alternatives

With Apple-owned Lala closing in a month, what happens to Google Music Search, which has used Lala clips as part of its service? We’ll see, says Google — noting there are variety of alternatives out there?

When you do a music-related search on Google, you often get special Music OneBox that appears at the top of its results, like this for 21st century breakdown:

The music preview links next to the song’s thumbnail all lead to Lala, where a short clip of the song can be heard. What happens when Lala goes away?

“They’re one of multiple services that we work with to get music clips and information from, and we’ll await word from them about what they’re planning to do,” said Jason Freidenfelds.

Indeed, you’ll see in the screenshot above that Google already offers other places with music previews, such as iLike and Rhapsody. Pandora is another service that sometimes appears. Lala is often selected, but it’s not the default for all searches, Google tells me. It seems easy enough for another provider to be used.

You might also recall that RJ Pittman, who was prominent in Google Music Search’s launch in October, jumped ship to Apple in March. So who’s running music search now?

Freidenfeld said Pittman was more an advocate for the product that the main lead on it, stressing it’s a team effort, tied in tightly with Google’s search group, and that people continue to develop it.