Yahoo! Launches Audio Search Beta

guaigean writes "Internet News is running a story on a new Yahoo! service titled Yahoo! Audio Search and it is currently in beta. The tool allows the searching of audio files and Yahoo! claims to have 50 million music, voice, and other files cataloged in the search. It searches across multiple mainstream music sites, as well as plenty of independent pages. Now if only it was tied in with some sort of lyric search."

FCC

[Mishra100]

This just seems like Yahoo is on a trip to yet another FCC regulation debate. But starting a service like this is a good counter-action to google's successful products.

Re:Wow.. step ahead?

[Jarlsberg]

Ok. I see. It makes more sense now - I suppose Yahoo gets a cut for each song purchased from these sites.

But illegal download? I'm not doing anything illegal when I search for mp3's with Google. At best, the linked site might not have the rights to distribute the file, but that's a different thing altogether.

Re:Wow.. step ahead?

[term8or]

Well, it could be different in the quantity of information it catalogues and the quality of the search used. For example, the classical music geek above searched for "Ich habe genug" and got results. With altavista you also get useful results (i.e. the quantity of information seems similar). He/she also used some interior text from the cantata like "Mein Trost ist nur allein" and still got useful information. This wasn't the case when I used altavista (i.e. the quality of indexing may be inferior).

Re:Wow.. step ahead?

[Momoru]

Yes, Google's "dig through the help files to find the command and then type a command line-like argument" is much easier then Yahoo's complicated "just type what you want in the search bar" approach. I can see why you don't use Yahoo on principle, those fuckers just can't make things simple.

Re:Wow.. step ahead?

[Jugalator]

Yahoo Search searches podcasts, has song length filters, searches audio services, has album views with artist bios etc if searching for artists, ... Finally, no one said this was an "innovation" and never done before.