By Rachel Cericola, Dec 21, 2005

Last week, Google announced its music search feature. Enter a band, artist, album or song name on Google Music, and music-related results pop up. Easy, right?

Expect to get back news, reviews, retailer info and cover art from a variety of sources, including Amazon.com and iTunes. The company says the service skews toward more popular artists, but my search for the more obscure came up surprisingly positive. It worked with artists, album titles and even song titles.

I'm a Yahoo! fan, but I have been looking more to Google for my searching needs. I have to say this is quite a neat little feature, as well as a nice boost for their side. For those of you that think typing right into the regular search bar is just as good, Google has a good point -- there are a lot of things on the Web. A general search will get you the same end result: a ton of general answers. A music-specific service narrows the field a bit.

Both MSN and Yahoo! currently have similar search services available, but steer users toward their own music stores versus Google’s comparison shopping approach.

The company says they plan to expand the lineup of artists as well as music stores over time.