Yahoo Testing New Audio Search Service
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Yahoo! will begin testing a new search engine feature today that will search through songs offered by services such as iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster. The service, available at
http://audio.search.yahoo.com, will have an index of over 50 million audio files identified by their metadata, including podcasts.
"It's really one-stop shopping for the music fan," said Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo's director of technology development, search and marketplace group.
Yahoo's new service is coming on the heels of the introduction of their subscription music service that is now $6.99 per month, although it was launched a few months ago at $4.99 per month.
Yahoo! has said that it will not initially serve up ads along with the service since it makes a commission on each song sold, but that could change as the service evolves.
