6 ms·

Googling a musician and their song brings up a new track listing UI

45 points by artursapek 14y ago

anigbrowl 14y ago
Doesn't work for me - I was able to bring up your selection but my searches don't work, even if I substitute them into the (absurdly long) URL.
- icebraining 14y ago
  If you search for e.g. "Pink Floyd" it shows the sidebar, with a tracklist. If you then click on a song on the tracklist, it'll display the same UI as the linked one. On the other hand, it's listing The Great Gig in the Sky as being part of the Brain Damage album, which as far as I know doesn't even exist.
  - jrabone 14y ago
    It doesn't, they mean Dark Side of the Moon. It's not exactly Floyd's most obscure album... One thing I learned at Amazon, data quality is a huge problem for any media information. It wouldn't surprise me if this specific instance was just a missing field somewhere which you could use to "fingerprint" the data source (or more correctly, one of the data sources, because aggregation is the next huge problem in media data). Often these data sources are in truly awful formats as well, with special problems when it comes to eg. Unicode names. The popular stuff gets fixed quickly, everything else gets to rot until someone with the right mindset and interest goes and fixes it. The bet with a lot of sites that take corrections is on whether there are enough people who care to make a difference.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Interesting. I'm amazed that anybody buys music at all anymore when it's possible to just use google as your jukebox. Type in a song name and get back a youtube result with the complete song pretty much every time.
- jrockway 14y ago
  I buy music for the sound quality, the ability to play back on any device type (xmms2 or my sansa player), and to support the artist. Some artists share their songs on YouTube and being able to listen first makes it much easier to pull the trigger on buying the album. But I wouldn't listen to music on YouTube in preference to buying the files (or one of those shiny disks they had in the 2000s), even if the artist is making money through YouTube monetization.
- blisse 14y ago
  You buy music to show support if you can't make it to a concert. You buy music because Youtube usually has horrible sound quality. You buy music because you want to listen to your music on your iPod or preferred MP3 player. You buy music because you want to hear your music as it's released, and not wait for someone to upload it on Youtube in 3 days. You buy music because you have obscure songs that don't exist on Youtube. You buy music because you'd rather have local files in case you have no Internet. You buy music because you have a superior alternative to Youtube, as in playlist management, Replay Gain, and more.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I'm not an audiophile, but is there a significant difference in quality between an MP3 file and a 720P youtube video? Streaming 256kps would seem fairly trivial on even a mobile connection these days. I know I can use spotify on my phone over 3G at 192kps. It would also just seem to be a question of "when" before somebody releases a really good music player application that just uses youtube as a backend.
    - ZoFreX 14y ago
      No, but many, many YouTube videos that are songs (either music videos or slideshow + song) have been re-uploaded and/or re-encoded many times, so often they don't have a high quality option, or if they do you're watching a 360p re-encoded in 720p. If you've ever listened to a song on YouTube that sounded like it was being played underwater, that's what happened to it!
dudus 14y ago
Seems like there is also a special view for albums http://goo.gl/uSOxj http://goo.gl/uSOxj
harryf 14y ago
Not working on mobile. Google still seems works on the basis of "mobile second" when it comes to search.
- statictype 14y ago
  Which is probably the correct decision.
clicks 14y ago
Slightly off-topic, but since the 'UI' is in the topic, I'll bite: Why did Google need to re-invent the scrollbar ( http://i.imgur.com/ztm93.png http://i.imgur.com/ztm93.png ), without the two squares (sorry, don't know what they're called) on the opposite sides, which you can click without having to move the mouse up/down;left/right? What is wrong with traditional scrollbars that Google felt the need to get away from it?
- icebraining 14y ago
  Probably an aesthetic decision, but why would you have to move the mouse? No scrollwheel?
- aviraldg 14y ago
  Probably because the "squares" have a very small target area and most people either use the scroll button if they're using a mouse or scroll gestures if they're using a touchpad. I'm pretty sure they have detailed information about this from the metrics that they collect from Chrome.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    too bad scroll gestures on a touchpad are rather inaccurate on some laptops.
- phaker 14y ago
  Looks like it's your browser: http://i.imgur.com/xsWgk.png http://i.imgur.com/xsWgk.png (or maybe they are a/b-testing it?)
  - 1880 14y ago
    It's a Webkit thing.
- Lagged2Death 14y ago
  I think they're just called "arrow buttons." Unfortunately some influential sites and UI designers have lately been trying to improve on the standard scrollbar [1], often in an attempt to make them work better for very small screens and/or touchscreen devices. IMHO, their changes have mostly been steps backwards as far as traditional mousing is concerned. The scrollbar is old and highly evolved. It's not immediately obvious that it can be improved. I suspect it will be with us until we eliminate scrolling itself. In Firefox and Opera, the arrow buttons are showing up fine for me. How are you viewing this? [1]] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/11/computer_scrollbars_why_is_apple_eradicating_a_linchpin_of_user_interface_design_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/11/...
hardik988 14y ago
That's weird. It only works when I click on the submitted URL, but not when I search for it myself.
feniv 14y ago
This looks great, but why have a special UI style for this when they already have a useful sidebar display when searching for movie directors or other famous people? : http://goo.gl/JGMQ6 http://goo.gl/JGMQ6
aviraldg 14y ago
Also works for authors.
inkaudio 14y ago
This is fine, but where’s the lyrics ? I’ll argue people want to see lyrics display inline when they do a lyric search. I understand licensing will be an issue with the major labels but Google could take a bottom’s up approach. Before Myspace collapse, it was on top of the social network world. Developing software on the web for indie musicians helped Myspace get to the top. Soon majority of independent musicians and their fans were using myspace. When Myspace become a popular place for discovering music the major labels all did deals with Myspace. If Google made effective cross promotion/sales tools with lyrics search for indies, I believe the majors will follow
tnuc 14y ago
Searching for author, movies, television shows, music etc. brings up an interface that is scraping the data on Wikipedia. Wikipedia could/should have done this a long time ago, trying to do anything like this on Wikipedia would take at least 1000 lines of discussion on one of the many talk pages. Does Google have less politics than Wikipedia?
- rm999 14y ago
  Why should Wikipedia have done this? Wikipedia is conservative because their job isn't to do much more than be a solid encyclopedia. What's great is they keep their data open so people can do what they want with it.
mark_l_watson 14y ago
That is pretty cool. I very much also like the other info-box style summaries that they provide. For me there is high value in sometimes not having to navigate off of the first search results page.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  Indeed, I have been enjoying DuckDuckGo's zero-click results for over a year now :)

45 points by artursapek 14y ago

Doesn't work for me - I was able to bring up your selection but my searches don't work, even if I substitute them into the (absurdly long) URL.

icebraining 14y ago
If you search for e.g. "Pink Floyd" it shows the sidebar, with a tracklist. If you then click on a song on the tracklist, it'll display the same UI as the linked one. On the other hand, it's listing The Great Gig in the Sky as being part of the Brain Damage album, which as far as I know doesn't even exist.
- jrabone 14y ago
  It doesn't, they mean Dark Side of the Moon. It's not exactly Floyd's most obscure album... One thing I learned at Amazon, data quality is a huge problem for any media information. It wouldn't surprise me if this specific instance was just a missing field somewhere which you could use to "fingerprint" the data source (or more correctly, one of the data sources, because aggregation is the next huge problem in media data). Often these data sources are in truly awful formats as well, with special problems when it comes to eg. Unicode names. The popular stuff gets fixed quickly, everything else gets to rot until someone with the right mindset and interest goes and fixes it. The bet with a lot of sites that take corrections is on whether there are enough people who care to make a difference.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Interesting. I'm amazed that anybody buys music at all anymore when it's possible to just use google as your jukebox. Type in a song name and get back a youtube result with the complete song pretty much every time.

jrockway 14y ago
I buy music for the sound quality, the ability to play back on any device type (xmms2 or my sansa player), and to support the artist. Some artists share their songs on YouTube and being able to listen first makes it much easier to pull the trigger on buying the album. But I wouldn't listen to music on YouTube in preference to buying the files (or one of those shiny disks they had in the 2000s), even if the artist is making money through YouTube monetization.
blisse 14y ago
You buy music to show support if you can't make it to a concert. You buy music because Youtube usually has horrible sound quality. You buy music because you want to listen to your music on your iPod or preferred MP3 player. You buy music because you want to hear your music as it's released, and not wait for someone to upload it on Youtube in 3 days. You buy music because you have obscure songs that don't exist on Youtube. You buy music because you'd rather have local files in case you have no Internet. You buy music because you have a superior alternative to Youtube, as in playlist management, Replay Gain, and more.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I'm not an audiophile, but is there a significant difference in quality between an MP3 file and a 720P youtube video? Streaming 256kps would seem fairly trivial on even a mobile connection these days. I know I can use spotify on my phone over 3G at 192kps. It would also just seem to be a question of "when" before somebody releases a really good music player application that just uses youtube as a backend.
  - ZoFreX 14y ago
    No, but many, many YouTube videos that are songs (either music videos or slideshow + song) have been re-uploaded and/or re-encoded many times, so often they don't have a high quality option, or if they do you're watching a 360p re-encoded in 720p. If you've ever listened to a song on YouTube that sounded like it was being played underwater, that's what happened to it!

dudus 14y ago

Seems like there is also a special view for albums http://goo.gl/uSOxj http://goo.gl/uSOxj

harryf 14y ago

Not working on mobile. Google still seems works on the basis of "mobile second" when it comes to search.

statictype 14y ago
Which is probably the correct decision.

clicks 14y ago

Slightly off-topic, but since the 'UI' is in the topic, I'll bite: Why did Google need to re-invent the scrollbar ( http://i.imgur.com/ztm93.png http://i.imgur.com/ztm93.png ), without the two squares (sorry, don't know what they're called) on the opposite sides, which you can click without having to move the mouse up/down;left/right? What is wrong with traditional scrollbars that Google felt the need to get away from it?

icebraining 14y ago
Probably an aesthetic decision, but why would you have to move the mouse? No scrollwheel?
aviraldg 14y ago
Probably because the "squares" have a very small target area and most people either use the scroll button if they're using a mouse or scroll gestures if they're using a touchpad. I'm pretty sure they have detailed information about this from the metrics that they collect from Chrome.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  too bad scroll gestures on a touchpad are rather inaccurate on some laptops.
phaker 14y ago
Looks like it's your browser: http://i.imgur.com/xsWgk.png http://i.imgur.com/xsWgk.png (or maybe they are a/b-testing it?)
- 1880 14y ago
  It's a Webkit thing.
Lagged2Death 14y ago
I think they're just called "arrow buttons." Unfortunately some influential sites and UI designers have lately been trying to improve on the standard scrollbar [1], often in an attempt to make them work better for very small screens and/or touchscreen devices. IMHO, their changes have mostly been steps backwards as far as traditional mousing is concerned. The scrollbar is old and highly evolved. It's not immediately obvious that it can be improved. I suspect it will be with us until we eliminate scrolling itself. In Firefox and Opera, the arrow buttons are showing up fine for me. How are you viewing this? [1]] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/11/computer_scrollbars_why_is_apple_eradicating_a_linchpin_of_user_interface_design_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/11/...

hardik988 14y ago

That's weird. It only works when I click on the submitted URL, but not when I search for it myself.

feniv 14y ago

This looks great, but why have a special UI style for this when they already have a useful sidebar display when searching for movie directors or other famous people? : http://goo.gl/JGMQ6 http://goo.gl/JGMQ6

aviraldg 14y ago

Also works for authors.

inkaudio 14y ago

This is fine, but where’s the lyrics ? I’ll argue people want to see lyrics display inline when they do a lyric search. I understand licensing will be an issue with the major labels but Google could take a bottom’s up approach. Before Myspace collapse, it was on top of the social network world. Developing software on the web for indie musicians helped Myspace get to the top. Soon majority of independent musicians and their fans were using myspace. When Myspace become a popular place for discovering music the major labels all did deals with Myspace. If Google made effective cross promotion/sales tools with lyrics search for indies, I believe the majors will follow

tnuc 14y ago

Searching for author, movies, television shows, music etc. brings up an interface that is scraping the data on Wikipedia. Wikipedia could/should have done this a long time ago, trying to do anything like this on Wikipedia would take at least 1000 lines of discussion on one of the many talk pages. Does Google have less politics than Wikipedia?

rm999 14y ago
Why should Wikipedia have done this? Wikipedia is conservative because their job isn't to do much more than be a solid encyclopedia. What's great is they keep their data open so people can do what they want with it.

mark_l_watson 14y ago

That is pretty cool. I very much also like the other info-box style summaries that they provide. For me there is high value in sometimes not having to navigate off of the first search results page.

tripzilch 14y ago
Indeed, I have been enjoying DuckDuckGo's zero-click results for over a year now :)