Searching for Music

Google not only lets you search for movie information, it also is a great search engine for musicin particular, popular music artists. Google knows the names of tens of thousands of popular performers; all you have to do is enter the performer's name in the search box, and Google returns specific information about that performer.

For example, when you search for norah jones, Google displays a Norah Jones section at the top of the search results page, as shown in Figure 10.18. This section includes a brief listing of the artist's most recent (or most well-known) albums and songs.

Figure 10.18. The result of a music artist search.

Click the performer's name and you see a visual listing of the artist's albums, as shown in Figure 10.19. Click any album art or title and you see a listing of album tracks, a link to album reviews, and links to download tracks from the album from a variety of online music stores, as shown in Figure 10.20. Back on the main artist page, there are also links to websites devoted to the artist, news about the artist, photos of the artist, and mentions of the artists in Google Groups discussion forums.

Figure 10.19. The artist's albums; click for detailed info.

Figure 10.20. Detailed track and purchase information for the selected album.

The amount of information available from this simple performer search is surprising, and sometimes a little overwhelming. Most users have no idea that this much quality information is available by merely Googling a performer's name!