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Google Partners With Lala, iLike On Music Searches

Posted on: Thursday, 29 October 2009, 13:50 CDT

In an effort to extend its reach in the music industry, Google announced on Wednesday a partnership with Web services Lala and MySpace's iLike to give music fans an easier way to find, sample and buy songs on the Internet, Reuters reported.

Google users will soon be able to sample a song with a pop-up box that will play at least a 30-second segment -- in some cases the entire song -- provided by iLike and Lala, which will then offer links to purchase the music.

Offerings from Pandora, iMeem and Rhapsody will also incorporate links to those music sites, to help consumers discover music related to Google search queries.

The feature was made available to Google users across the United States on Wednesday.

Investors hope that streaming songs or video clips online will help stem the fan-base losses.

Google said on its blog that it gets millions of search queries about music every day.

“You want to know more about your favorite artists, find that new album or that iconic song, or figure out the name of that tune stuck in your head,” it said.

The new service will help listeners find songs by entering a search by title, album, artist or even a line or two of lyrics.

Contrary to reports that Google had forged ties with the likes of Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, the Internet search leader said it did not work directly with any record labels, but it had the industry's full support.

R.J. Pittman, director of product management for Google, said everybody's been very supportive and they hope to improve the search experience with the help of streaming partners, which offer interesting business models of their own.

Last week, the popular social networking site Facebook also expanded its musical offerings through a deal to integrate Lala into its gift store. iLike was also recently acquired by News Corp's MySpace social networking site.

Set to launch December, Google's own Youtube video site is separately partnering with Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Sony Music to create Vevo, a music video service.

New users of the Lala-powered music service will be able to stream any song in its catalog of 8.5 million tunes once for free, and then it sells unlimited streams for 10 cents per track and MP3 files, starting at 89 cents.

Bill Nguyen, the founder of Lala, said he expects the new alliances to significantly expand its business.

"We'll see a thousand percent increase in our business. We have about 100,000 customers and the majority or about 60,000 of them are active, which generate about $67 per year," he said.

Lala’s revenues now total less than $10 million, but Nguyen said he expects it to be much larger by next year.

"We expect to be one of the largest retailers of online music within one year after this deal," he said, adding that he anticipates many artists will start releasing music just for this platform.

"There's always so much discussion involving business models and the industry's fixation on pricing, which has overshadowed the importance of discovery. This is going to be very profound for the industry," he said.

Lala also soon plans to release an Apple iPhone application.

Steve Savoca of independent record label Domino Recording called the service a tremendous opportunity.

"Once we expose people to these services we can change behavior and show the legitimate side of music is probably where they need to be," said Savoca.

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On the Net:

• Google
• LaLa
• iLike

Source: RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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