Story from Digital Music News:

Google Labs has just spun another music-oriented product, designed to track preferences and sought-after artists. Dubbed Music Trends, the service works through the Google Talk IM client and tracks global music consumption patterns. Talk users must opt-in to the service and “share” their music preferences from one of several players, including iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and the Yahoo Music Engine. Google then archives listening habits and presents the ranked results in a searchable database that is updated every night. Browsers can click on particular songs to access a variety of artist information, and can sometimes use links buy the song through one of several online stores.

Google is steadily aiming to organize the world’s information, and the latest initiative is another step towards that goal. In his book, The Search, John Battelle identified the phenomenon of a “database of intentions,” a description that neatly fits the latest release. Google noted Wednesday on its blog that “it would be fun for you to see the musical tastes of the broader community,” and Music Trends will be interesting and valuable to a number of parties. The offering seems innocent enough, though others are more skeptical about the motivations behind the rollout. ZDNet’s Donna Bogatin noted the company is likely looking not only to “organize the world’s information,” but also to “sell ads against it.” She speculates that Google could leverage its Music Trends data to bolster AdWords sales, and to spur an online music business through its recently unveiled PayPal-like service, Google Checkout.

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