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Google’s rumored push into music has panned out into an new search function with integrated playback.  Thanks to a deal with MySpace (who have acquired media playback firm iLike) and Lala, searches for songs, artists or albums will also produce links to audio previews and places you can actually buy the track.  Meanwhile partnerships with Pandora, Rhapsody and imeem will offer suggestions of similar artists and music.

Video overview after the cut

There’s also improved lyrics search, which means you can query with a few remembered words or phrases from a song and Google will attempt to locate which track those words are mentioned in.  Downloads appear to be in MP3 format and priced at roughly the same as what you’d pay at Amazon MP3 or the iTunes Store.

The new Google “Discover Music” search and preview features will be US-only at first, and will begin to roll out to users today.  No word on when international users might expect it, but Google are promising refinement of the system to better locate tracks so we’re hoping they also sign up some international partners too; Spotify would certainly make for a good choice.