Google's Music Search

[imron]

Has anyone else checked out Google's Chinese music search? At first glance, it appears to be really quite good. Instead of returning hundreds of results, you only get one per song/artist/album combination, with all content being provided by Chinese music site Top100.

The Top100 player is really quite impressive too. At the side, it contains the song lyrics (with the current lyrics highlighted), and you can click and scroll the lyrics to get to the place you want in the song! Best of all, it's all free, and paid for by advertising, making it legal too.

[skylee]

This is all I get: "抱歉，谷歌不在您所在的地区提供您所需要的服务。 "

[roddy]

Likewise from the UK. The music will presumably only have been licensed for the mainland China market, hence they'll need to block other users if they don't want to annoy record company partners. Sounds great though.

Best of all, it's all free, and paid for by advertising, making it legal too.

I think it'll be the licensed content that makes it legal - Baidu's mp3 search was free and carried advertising, didn't make it legal

[imron]

Notice how I said "and paid for by advertising". Sure Baidu has advertising, but they don't use that to pay for licensing.

Regarding access outside of China, what happens if you visit the Top100 site manually:

[roddy]

The online player didn't seem to work, but that may be due to using Firefox. Attempts to download directly fail - doesn't seem to be blocked, just too far away . . .

[imron]

Nope, works fine under Firefox for me. I haven't tried it with any other browser.

[elina]

Looks good. Searched 许巍 on it and also on my favorite songs’ site, turned out some different albums, will do some further exploring.

[atitarev]

Not working at the moment?

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I wish there was a site/technology where you could search by melody. Say, you like a song very much but all you remember is the tune... Of course, you would need to enter a search somehow by putting in some music. Does it make sense?

[gato]

I wish there was a site/technology where you could search by melody. Say, you like a song very much but all you remember is the tune... Of course, you would need to enter a search somehow by putting in some music. Does it make sense?

You mean a Melody Recognition program like this:

http://www.melodyhound.com/#

[imron]

Not working at the moment?

Apparently it only works in mainland China.