Google has - finally - added a music search feature to its search engine.

We are not talking about a separate music search engine per se, but rather music search feature in the regular search engine.

For instance: Do a search for the Norwegian band “a-ha” in the regular Google search form, and Google will bring you a link to the band at the top of the results, just ahead of the American Historical Association.

Below the a-ha listing, Google will add a “More music results for a-ha” link, leading to a new three section page, listing sites about a-ha, songs with the words a-ha in the title and albums by the group.

Actually, this doesn’t work as well as expected as far as a-ha is concerned. The “Sites about a-ha” is really listings of a-ha albums with links to different music stores, as is the “albums” section.

Never mind, different artist searches do bring up a list of links in the left hand column of the result page, namely “Related web” pages, including links to “artist websites” “latest news”, “artist photos” and “discuss this artist” (Google Groups), which is exactly what we where looking for.

According to the Google Blog the music search feature mostly works for popular U.S. artists and a more limited number of artists from other countries, but Google plans to expand it to classical music, worldwide artists, and lesser-known performers.

To prove this point: In the case of a-ha, the “artist website” link bring up a lot of irrelevant pages, including the aforementioned Historical Association. A search for Madonna do bring relevant artist related sites though, which proves that it is the American connection that makes the difference, not the generic nature of the words.

Yes, Google Music Search can be used by searchers who want to buy music, whether they are looking for physical CDs and DVDs (from for instance Amazon, Buy.com, CD Universe and WalMart) or MP3 downloads (with links to Apple iTunes Music Store, Real, eMusic and others).

See also SEW: Google Adds Music Search Feature