Slated to launch today, Google Music isn’t a music store or a download service. Instead, it’s a combo search enginne and merchant matchmaker. Google will give searchers fast links to lyrics, musical artists and CD titles from the main search results page, according to CNET News.com. It’s a little like the movie search arrangement that puts show times and theaters at the top of the results page when you type a movie title in the search box; go deeper on the movie links and you get to reviews, IMDB results for each movie. But, unlike the movie search, Google Music will have direct links when applicable to retailers for orders or downloads. So far, Tunes, Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com are on board. If it works like other merchant-referral relationships, Google will get a fee every time the retailer makes a sale. It could also get a fee for click-thrus even if they don’t result in sales.
At the same time, Google will be competing with services across the web that offer detailed information about musical artists, songs and recordings by providing supplemental Google pages with some of that information and “snippets” of reviews; those pages also will include links to some other sites — again, similar to the movie feature but not identical.
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