Google has a small music search engine that shows information about artists, albums and songs. You can use the music: operator in Google's search box to access the service. Unfortunately, the information is outdated, the links to reviews are broken and there's not much to see.

After many years of decay, Google decided to improve the service. CNet reports that Google will launch the new version of Google Music Search next week, in partnership with Lala and iLike. "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."

"The new Google music offering will allow users to stream an entire song via a link from La La Media Inc.'s Lala.com, or a sample from MySpace's music site iLike.com. The Lala link on the Google page will let users listen to a song once free of charge. In addition to offering a free streaming link, the new arrangement will offer options to pay 10 cents for an online-only version or about $1 to download an MP3," says the Wall Street Journal.

TechCrunch has some screenshots of the OneBox and the interface resembles Yahoo's music artist shortcut. Last year, Yahoo partnered with Rhapsody to allow users to play up to 25 full songs a month.

Here are some screenshots of Google Music Search as it looks today:




Google's most popular music-related service is YouTube and it's surprising that YouTube doesn't offer a better experience for watching music videos. YouTube could easily add information about music artists, lyrics, album arts, music charts. Later this year, YouTube will launch Vevo, a site that will feature Universal's music videos.

Google updated the music search OneBox, which used to include song titles, album names and some other information licensed from AllMusic. The new music search OneBox is only focused on finding music, previewing songs and easily buying them.

Search for an artist, an album name or even some lyrics and Google returns a list of songs that can be played with one click. Full music previews are provided by iLike and Lala, but Google also links to other music sites: Pandora, Rhapsody and imeem. When you click on a music result, Google opens a player in a pop-up window, which isn't very user-friendly.

"With Lala, you can hear one full length preview per song. Each subsequent play will be a 0:30 clip," explains Lala. This limitation is very easy to bypass: just clear the cookies for lala.com.

The OneBox is limited to the US, probably because the music sites that partnered with Google can provide full previews only in the US. I didn't manage to trigger the OneBox, not even using a US proxy. The sample searches provided by Google include some additional parameters that need to be added to a Google URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bob+Dylan&esrch=MusicOneboxDemoOptin::LaunchDemoOptIn

Google says it will be "rolling this feature out gradually to users across the U.S. over the next day".

Not wanting to feel left out, Yahoo reminds users that it launched a similar feature last year. "Since launching a partnership with Rhapsody in September 2008 and launching the FoxyPlayer last year, music has been an integral part of the Yahoo! Search experience as well. We have found that nearly 6 percent of all Yahoo! searches are music-related."