As if Google’s social search wasn’t enough paradigm-shifting innovation for one week (and, really, when is it ever enough for Google?), yesterday the search giant announced that it has partnered with music services including imeem, Pandora, Lala, Rhapsody and the recently MySpace-acquired iLike to create … you guessed it: Google Music Search. Read the whole spiel on Google’s blog.

Though Google has for some time been displaying music-related results separately when you search for a band or artist, the new music search feature reduces the “time to result” — that is, the time between you typing in the name of a band, album or song or lyric snippet and hearing the music.

Now, when you enter your search, songs are listed ready to be previewed right then and there, courtesy of Lala or iLike. Links to imeem, Rhapsody and Pandora also show up.

From the music industry’s perspective, the best thing about this development has to be that while it serves people’s craving for instant, free noise, it simultaneously directs them to sites that offer legal listening and, of course, a way to buy the music.

As a major-label exec told Wired’s Epicenter blog:

“Google is the most powerful internet partner that these music services could have” said Warner Music Group executive vice president of digital strategy and business development Michael Nash. “We think that it’s potentially very significant from the standpoint [of] generating revenue and gives a big boost to legitimate digital music services.” Nash added that while Google’s general search function will now highlight these playable search results, “it’s a win-win” because it will still surface the artist’s own website prominently.

And how much is the music? Lala appears to have the lowest prices and best purchasing options. The new Swell Season album, Strict Joy, will set you back $9.99 or $15.99 on iTunes, depending on whether you go for the “bonus tracks” version (which has two bonus tracks) or the Deluxe Edition, which has a bunch of live cuts. Lala offers the album as DRM-free MP3s for $7.49. Up that to $12.48, and they’ll send you a CD and digital album, both. Or, if you’re just going to listen to it on your computer anyway, you can pay just over a buck for unlimited online listening. ILike has it for $10.99. No bells, no whistles, though it does provide a link to buy the album on iTunes. Older releases appear mostly to go for $10.99 on iLike and under $8 on Lala.

Guess we know which service we wanna see show up more in that Google music search. And hey, if this got us talking about buying music, that’s a good thing, right?