In a much hyped move Google changed their search presentation for musicians/music this week. The business implications of what this means to Google, iMeem, LaLa, Pandora, MySpace and other industry players is undergoing some hefty analysis.
So, why is Google such a clear-shot winner? The answer lies in the way the deals are being constructed. Google is organizing and pointing to on-demand streams, images, lyrics, and other information – but not paying royalties, haggling with labels, or otherwise getting their hands dirty with messy music content (of course, YouTube is another story). On top of that, Google is not splitting AdWords advertising revenue with its partners, according to sources close to the arrangements.
What seems to be overlooked in all this navel gazing is – what information is the user actually getting?
Give it a shot, search for “Grace Potter” on Google (note: not everyone will see this functionality yet). Here’s what I see
A few questions for you.
- Are the acoustic versions of “Ah, Mary” and “I Want Something That I Want” a realistic picture of the music you can expect to see/hear when dealing with GPN. Note for skeptics, almost all the Google searches that hit this site are for “Grace Potter” not “Grace Potter and the Nocturnals”. The returned results for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals are much better.
- Google prides itself on presenting the most “relevant information” at the top of their search via patented algorithms, with music though – they’ve thrown that out the window. Is this a good thing?
- Look further, Google started inserting “Image Results” into search about four or five months ago. Shouldn’t folks be clicking the “images” tab to see these?
- At the risk of sounding whiny, what we’re seeing is Google artificially pushing sites like “This Is Somewhere” down the search results page in favor of money making partnerships. Of course, it’s their right to do whatever they want, but in terms of legitimacy of search results I’m starting to smell a rat.
- Artists are going to have to spend more time keeping up with their iLike, Rhapsody and iMeem profiles since they are not artificially driven to the top of Google Search. FYI the Rhapsody and iMeem profiles for Grace Potter and nearly useless.
- Is this too geeky? Sorry, go listen to some music. I spend lots of time thinking through things like this.
Grousing aside, LaLa does some pretty great stuff allowing users to listen to full streaming songs and maybe, in the end, this is what an artist wants? Personally, I’m just wary of the “music industry” doing what is right for them and not what is right for the artists. What do you think – does the new Google Music Search interface help artists? Or help put money in the pockets of industry players?
My first take (believe it or not based on all the crap above) – a good thing.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Have been following this via Twitter – or trying to – don’t have your insight.
I’m still skeptical this will be a good thing for anyone but Google . . right now Lala looks like the biggest beneficiary. Am fine with that – found them because of some sites that use their player and like what they do . . Rhapsody is still my go-to for “leased” music though.
This move seems to be bleeding into all the music news / speculations . . saw a piece earlier today re: Ticketmaster making a mistake in not snapping up Lala.
Personal use perspective . .
I have been finding the obvious things on my own since shortly after started playing online . . what I want from a search is the less visible content driven sites like TIS.
I’ve been using Yahoo search as a first choice for quite awhile because usually got more of what I was looking for on 1st / 2nd page – - dream scenario for me would be that they decide to become the go-to place for the less casual hunters.
Crap . . would you please consider giving us a one chance edit option !?!?!
should have read . . anyone but Google and Lala
Meanwhile . . . How can we help compensate and drive visibility for the band and TIS ?
Find I am relying more and more on Twitter for my music news so have a bias in that direction.
Not sure how you’ll feel about this but . . .
I like the easy tweet feature you’re using here – here comes the But . . I question if it should show as a RT for kcortez.
Have been tempted to drop it and use thisissomewhere.com instead . . and when have space add ( @gracepoternocs ).
And that leads to this . . .
Think the twitter pundits are correct when say the way to encourage followers is to follow back and occasionally respond to an @ or a comment. It takes seconds to click on your own @s a or a saved search for Grace Potter which gets almost all the ‘ and the Nocturnals ‘ tweets too.
Looking at what other celebs do . . don’t think it has to be often – just once in a while @ or RT someone who’s said something especially nice or even funny. Not my thing but know a few people who reply to a favorite celeb often in hopes sometime they’ll be the one who gets answered.
As always . . jmo and only worth the ‘ paper ‘ it’s written on . . .
I changed the tweet to RT @gracepotternocs – good idea.
As to GPN tweeting back – also a good idea, please give Grace a call.
If you google “Grace Potter sites,” this site is the third item down. Don’t know if anyone would do that, though, unless they were trying to make you feel better.
The rant probably started out sounding like me being pissy for getting pushed down on Google ranking. That said, if it’s better for the band for things to work this way then I’m good with it.
And it’s the first one if you google “Grace Potter blogs.”
I recieve so much music news from various sources that frankly, I Never search for it! Oh occasionally I’ll use a bands name in a search if I’ve not used their website in awhile.
Hey, check out some of the ideas Bonerama is doing on thier website. Specifically the Boner Doner Program!
http://boneramamusic.com/boner-donor/
KC . . I believe sites like this one help build long term invested fan communities so think you and others who run similar sites have every right to be concerned, i.e. “pissy”, about this change if it means being pushed off the front page. Reality seems to be that not a lot of people refine their searches or even go beyond that first page. Plus can’t shake the feeling that this is going to snowball .
Not sure how /if this ties in but was surprised to learn that Google ignores the tags on blogs/boards when gathering information.
So does that mean that frequent/consistent use of a name in thread titles and comments could help generate attention from their bots ? would that attention then help with search page location ?
Todd . . all those sources you enjoy now had a starting point(s) right ?
Guess my concern is for those just getting online and/or starting from scratch to build the kind of wonderful grapevine you have. Seems they are the ones who may miss out on some great sources of information / entertainment if a small group dominates search pages.
Or then there’s this . . . maybe the elephants dancing annoys me so much because I’m just an aging hippie with lifelong issues re: the whole “bigger is better” philosophy . . .
Cute KC . . do love a bit of snark with my wine . . think you know I would try to make the case if got the chance though.
i’m going to have to respectfully disagree. i think you’re blowing this a bit out of proportion. TIS still appears on the first page of search results, above amazon. the first result is obviously the best match based on the domain name – gracepotter.com – as it should be. then we have myspace and wikipedia, obviously because of their weight based on overall site traffic, links to, etc. – whatever google is tossing into their algorithm. then image search results – ok plug for google but i guess in their experience users would like to see image results in web results? then youtube – ok owned by google, but still one of the most trafficked sites on the web. then TIS – you are in good company. then amazon, brooklynvegan, and earvolution. your closest competitors based on size and audience are brooklynvegan and earvolution, and you win on relevance of content. the search results make sense to me, and aren’t radically different from before. most of these sites have been on the first page of search results for a long time, in mostly that order.
as for the new music feature, it’s a little box at the top that links to music sites. no i don’t believe there is any added benefit to the artist here. the benefactors are google, and the sites they are linking to. does ilike, pandora, imeem, etc. have an advantage in getting traffic over TIS because they are listed in this box and TIS is not? yes i believe they do. but then again, TIS is not a music destination site. it’s a fan blog. an incredibly well run fan blog, but still a fan blog dedicated to a single artist, with an audience that’s limited to other fans of this one particular band. these other sites are established music destinations, so i’m not surprised google would give them priority.
the argument i would make, is that it marginalizes OTHER music destination sites. where’s aimee street? emusic? when i search for other artists around gpn’s level, it’s always the same few sites that show up. if you search a local band, they don’t get anything at all, just the regular web results. obviously google is acting as gate keeper, giving priority to some sites in a given category (music destination) while ignoring others, that either it doesn’t view as valuable or sites that have refused to do a deal. for this i am suspicious of google’s motives, as they claim to “do no evil” and this flies in the face of net neutrality. they aren’t an ISP, but they are another level of gatekeeper in this case.
I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree with your disagreeing. I think.
If you feel that these added “music widgets” up at the top don’t benefit the artist then, in fact, I would still argue that they hurt the artist by pushing sites that might create long-term relationships with fans down on the search page in contrast to short-term “hey, buy this single” one offs.
If you think that simply being on the first page is enough – lots of research has shown that being in the first 5 places is best.
Organic Ranking Visibility – http://eyetools.com/research_google_eyetracking_heatmap.html
(shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)
Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%
Rank 3 – 100%
Rank 4 – 85%
Rank 5 – 60%
Rank 6 – 50%
Rank 7 – 50%
Rank 8 – 30%
Rank 9 – 30%
Rank 10 – 20%
Any push down of sites hurts traffic.
As to the “other” music destination sites Google has made it clear that they are perfectly happen to “swap out” these partnerships at any time they want so nothing is solid there.
I’m in total agreement on the “Net Neutrality” issue – which was mostly my original point.
that’s fair. i think this whole thing has been overhyped, frankly. itunes is king because of usability, because it’s part of a system. if you’re a mac user, you get the system. mac os – itunes – iphone – ipod – ical – mobileme – etc. it all works together very well. i don’t know that any of these sites are really poised to be very competitive with apple, despite google’s best efforts.
and there has previously been a google music search result which came up above all other search results, which contained discography information and possibly linked to amazon. so this pushing down of general search results in favor of a google endorsed “widget” is nothing new.
Is it the end of the 30 second clip?
If you are asking that based only on Lala playing a full song, remember that is a one time deal . . after that you get the 30 second clip with a pop up for their music leasing option.
I’m sure you’ve seen this but other readers may not have . .
http://www.celestialjukebox.org/2009/10/google-music.html
From a comment following the article
” And still, I wonder… whats in it for the artists ? “
And from the article :
Music aside, this kind of manipulation of search results without a “sponsored links” or “Google partners” label is disingenuous and a slippery slope in the trustworthiness of Google’s search results.
Agreed Kired – it is, essentially, an ad. Ad ad wrapped in altruism (maybe) but still an ad. I’m not seeing much push back in the blagojevich sphere but it’s early. Maybe the music industry is so beaten they’ll take anything.
I find the whole thing fascinating, now, if only someone paid me to find it fascinating!