Music Search

Songza is billed as a 'music search engine and jukebox'. According to the blurb, it allows users to listen to songs only (no downloads), and allows the user to chose the song or artist they want to listen to. OK, lets try the 'berlin bowie' query set.

• David Bowie Low.


• David Bowie "Heroes".


• David Bowie lodger .


• Iggy Pop lust for life.


• David Bowie the man who sold the world.


• David Bowie hunky dory.


• David Bowie Aladdin Sane.


• David Bowie ziggy stardust.

First thing, it returns a series of songs in a search list, but doesn't provide a link with which to put in above. Means you'll have to try the queries youself - sorry :(

I'm not sure if the songs are ranked - you're just provided with a list. Not all the songs are relevant to my need e.g. David Bowie songs are retrieved, but not all from the same album (no album detection then). Results lists are much less detailed than say Jogli. Results lists look pretty good however, and the search also picks up covers.

Clicking on a song brings up a cross shaped menu with four choices: 'play', 'share', 'rate' and 'add to playlist'. If you resize your window, and options to the left (from 'share') are lost.

With 'play', you can either watch the song, play the video, buy the song or get the discography (although it doesn't collect the songs together for the Album you can find out what song it is on). Discography is just a Google search however.

I did'nt find out about this "You can use spacebar to pause/play the current song, or that you can use the left/right arrow keys to move between songs?" and until late into my searching. Doesn't seem a terribly useable way to provide this functionality. I can understand the reasoning, but there are good analogies to use on the interface which users will understand very quickly. Oh I see, I made a mistake, some functions on the bottom are provided at the bottom of the browser, completely missed that first time!

Source for the song are 'YouTube' - I assume that if you buy the song, you're buying the Album version (from say the CD).

With 'rate' you're asked if the recording is a good one: 'yes' or 'no'.

With 'share' you can link, twitter, embed or email the song. Embed is below:



The interface also allows the user to play 'featured songs' or 'top played'

Overall this is a nice service and I enjoyed using it.

Posts in the series are available here.