Google Starts Tracking Music Trends

Google is testing out a new service as part of its Google Talk instant messaging client that tracks the music that its users are listening to and ranks the tracks by genre. From the Google Music Trends site, users can see the top songs and click them for more information.

The service is completely opt-in and is compatible with Apple's iTunes, Windows Media Player, Yahoo! Music Jukebox as well as Winamp. Google will also store the music as part of its Personal Search history, so users can look back and see the artists they listened to on any given date. Information on Google Music Trends is updated nightly and includes data from the past week.