Music Search

AllMusic provides search on 'artist/title', 'album', 'song' and 'classical work'. There is an advanced search, which just allows you to choose your database, either 'pop' or 'classical' - which doesn't seem to me to be particularly advanced. Right, here's the usual query set (using the album option):

• 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.

The search won't allow me to link to the searches, so you'll have to type them in yourself.

The results come back on three tags: 'All Music', 'Popular Music' and 'Classical Music'. When using the 'Low' search I clicked on the classical tab, and tried to play a snippet from Phillip Glass's Low symphony, which is taken from the Bowie Album, and got some other song - which was a tad annoying.

Searches come back listed by relevance, the only system I've looked at which is explicit about this so far. Searches by Album didn't work that well with the artist as well, the first hit tended to be a box set of Bowie CD's. Just typing in the Album name came up with much better results, so the searches appear very targetted.

Overall this is quite an interesting, and certainly more traditionally IR focused service.

Posts in the series are available here.