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How Much Music Can Google Find?

Google can find almost anything. In fact, I’m fairly certain Google can find your lost dog if you know the right keywords. So when OiNK was shutdown and OiNK himself made the comment that his website was no different from Google, I got to thinking: is it really possible to find the music you want using only Google? After a few informal tests, it seems that it is possible to find most of what you want with nothing more than a carefully crafted Google search. Here’s what I found…

(Disclaimer: Getting music this way is undoubtedly illegal, so don’t do it. Support the artists you like by buying their records and attending their concerts. The information presented here is for educational purposes only. Use this knowledge for good not evil.)

There seem to be two basic ways to find music using Google: the first takes advantage of open directories, and the second takes advantage of the myriad upload/storage services. We’ll tackle open directories first.

Open Directories

The basic search to use to find open directories looks like this:

intitle:”index of” artist “album title”

Obviously, you should replace artist with the artist you want, and the “album title” with the title of the album you want. If the artist is a multi-word artist like Pearl Jam, then wrapping the artist/band’s name in quotes would help narrow your results. This method, although it can work, is very hit-or-miss. During my tests, I either hit pay-dirt quickly or not at all. If you come up short with open directories, then give the second method a shot.

Upload/Storage Services

The second method takes advantage of online storage services such as Megaupload and Rapidshare, and is usually the method that yields the most fruit. A basic search for an album using this method looks like this:

artist “album title” (megaupload|rapidshare|sendspace|mediafire)

This method exploits the fact that most people who post albums online do so either by posting the full URL to the album, or creating a link that uses the name of the upload service. This will find something roughly 75% of the time. During these tests, however, I noticed that most results were from Blogger, so adding a site:blogspot.com to your search will focus the search to only sites with a http://*.blogspot.com address. Also, if you aren’t finding what you were looking for with the (megaupload|…|mediafire) part, try the search with just megaupload or just mediafire in the query; that usually gives you one or two new results.

So there you have it, two ways to find music using Google. Finding music this way is a crap shoot, and you’ll have a higher hit rate if you’re looking for non-RIAA material, but with a bit of patience and a little Google-fu, it’s not impossible to find what you want. So while OiNK may have been exaggerating, he wasn’t entirely wrong: it is possible to find (most of) your music using only Google. — cubicle17