August 4, 2005
Yahoo Introduces Search Service for Music
By SAUL HANSELL
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/technology/04yahoo.html?pagewanted=print
Hankering for a little yodeling? Yahoo has introduced a test version of a
new search service that it claims can comb through 50 million music, voice
and other audio files.
Yahoo is hardly the first search engine to offer audio search. Lycos,
Singingfish from AOL and even AltaVista, which Yahoo bought, offer search
engines that can seek out audio files.
Yahoo says its service, which is available at audio.search.yahoo.com, goes
beyond the others. It will have one section that, like the other sites,
maintains a broad index of audio files found by visiting millions of Web
sites. It has a second section devoted to specialized search for music and
a third devoted to podcasts, the emerging form of radiolike programs
offered on a regular basis.
Yahoo's music search service will let users find Web sites, news and photos
of artists, as well as information about albums and songs. It takes
information from Yahoo's own music service to organize the results.
"If you type in 'Like a Virgin' we'll know that the version by Madonna is
more popular than the cover by the Smashing Pumpkins," said Bradley
Horowitz, the company's director of media and desktop search. The more
popular version will be displayed higher in the search results.
The service will also display links to the online sites where users can pay
to download a song. Most major music sites have agreed to send Yahoo lists
of their songs and pay a commission on every song sold. The current version
of the service has no advertising, but Mr. Horowitz said ads might be added
later.
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George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
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