Google closes down Music Search India service

Google seems to have downed the shutters on its Music Search service in India. If one tries to access the Google Music site now, they are redirected to the company’s India search page instead. Clicking on the site’s Help section led us to a page with a 404 error (see below). 

Uh, oh!

Medianama reports that the catalogue on the site hadn't been updated for a while, hinting at the fact that Google most likely canned the project earlier. The report adds further that not only was the service introduced on a trial-basis, it also continued to remain so till its end.

Launched in October 2010, the service allowed users to search for Bollywood songs and stream them from partner sites like SaReGaMa. An interesting concept, the service provided Bollywood music lovers in the country a legal way to stream music, as it was offered from partners who owned legal permissions to stream music online.

This is how it looked!

The music would be streamed directly by Google’s partners to the user’s computer. Using Music Search India, users could pick from the latest Bollywood numbers to songs from the 80s. Additionally, if users entered any music-related query, say, the name of the song, artist or album on Google Search, the results would provide them with a “single click access” to their chosen songs.

The closure of Google Music Search India in fact comes close on the heels of the death of Flipkart's Flyte digital music download service. The company's Digital Media and Payments head, Mekin Maheshwari told NextBigWhat that Flipkart will take another punt at the digital music market after a pause. “We have realized that the music downloads business in India will not reach scale unless several problem areas such as music piracy and easy micro-payments etc are solved in great depth. Which is why, we feel that at present, it makes sense to take a step back from Flyte MP3s and revisit the digital music market opportunity at a later stage,” he told the website.