Microsoft today launched a completely revamped version of Bing’s search section for music videos. The company says it has been built from the ground up to simplify exploring, discovering, and browsing the best music videos available on the Web.
The service showcases content from leading video sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, MTV, Artist Direct and more. Microsoft also notes it features over 1.7 million songs, 70,000 artists, and a half a million albums, which aren’t exactly impressive numbers, but they’re nothing to scoff at either. This release strives “to provide the most comprehensive set of videos possible spanning genres, decades and geography.”
Here it is in action:
Microsoft is hoping to straddle three worlds: the classics, currently popular artists, as well as next-up-and-coming musicians. As a result, for each query the most popular video is showcased in the top-left of the screen, while the most relevant and popular music video for an artist, album or song is showcased in the upper right.
Furthermore, instead of forcing users to click through to a site to check a video, mousing-over the thumbnail will display a preview. At the same time, simply clicking on the play button will stream the content inline, without having to navigate away from Bing.
Last but not least, Bing can generate a “Top Songs” section that uses the relationships and attributes of artists, songs, and albums to provide a useful set of results. Videos are listed in the same order that they originally appeared a given album.
While albums are falling in popularity, they have played and still do play a big role in music. Bing thus has an album view (click on an album in the related albums section or click on the name of the album below the song name) for live albums, original albums, greatest hits, collections, and so on.
All in all, this is a big release that music lovers will likely enjoy. Google relies very heavily on YouTube to solve music video search, so it’s great to see Microsoft expanding more with Bing.
Top Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images
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