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Yahoo! Audio Search

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Yahoo! Next February 2006 • Vol.10 Issue 2 Page(s) 134-135 in print issue	Add To My Personal Library
Yahoo! Audio Search Scour The Web For Music & Sound

Searching for music on the Internet is like wandering through a giant CD store, only there’s no friendly clerk to help you. Yahoo!’s new Audio Search wants to change that. Yahoo! Audio Search is a free service that helps you find online music, podcasts, interviews, radio shows, speeches, comedy routines, sound effects, and more.

Audio Search can locate commercial music and other audio for sale, as well as free content. The service has already indexed 50 million audio files--a lot to hunt through on your own but easy to find with Yahoo!’s help.

Ethan Fassett, Yahoo!’s Product Manager for Audio Search, notes in his blog: “Audio publishing is taking on new life, and we feel we need to get some tools out there to help connect those who are listening to those who are talking, and singing, and sounding off.”

Start Audio Searching

To use Yahoo! Audio Search, browse to the Audio Search Web page: audio.search.yahoo.com. You’ll find a simple interface with a text box in which you can enter your search term. By default, Yahoo! searches for audio among three different categories: Music, where you’ll find songs from commercial, independent, and amateur artists; Podcasts, which uncovers news, interviews, opinions, radio shows, and other online broadcasts; and Other Audio, where you’ll unearth free music, sound effects, and themes from TV shows and movies.

Enter your search term, such as an artist’s name or song title, and Yahoo! delivers a page of links to the audio file. From the results page, you can narrow your search by type: You can choose only Music, Podcasts, or Other Audio, if you like. Click Music, and the page refreshes with links to songs by just the selected artist or title.

Get The Music

Alongside each song title is the artist’s name, the album that originally included the tune, and the year it was released. Many songs also provide a Sample button that lets you listen to a 30-second clip. Click the song’s album to see a list of all tracks on the CD. Select the artist’s name, and up pops a list of all of his or her albums. From the album page, you’ll also find links to biographies of the artist, upcoming concert dates, and reviews of the song or album.

Enter your search term, and the results page brings up links to your song or audio file.

Go back and click the link to any song title and up pops a page listing the online providers where you can download and buy the tune. Yahoo! has its own music stores, Yahoo! Music Unlimited and Musicmatch (which it bought in 2004). But Yahoo! has also arranged for other major music stores, such as iTunes, Napster, and MSN Music, and more obscure ones such as AudioLunchBox, GarageBand, and MP34U, to include them in the search results. Ethan Fassett notes in his blog, “. . . we give everyone a voice: from the major music services with access to the newest and largest mainstream catalogs, to the smallest, independent publisher.” If you have a favorite service, such as iTunes, you can limit your results to just that one provider.

Each audio service tells you the format of the song (WMA [Windows Media Audio], MP3, RealAudio, etc.), whether or not you can burn the track to a CD or copy it, and its price. A Download button then whisks you to the provider of your choice where you can preview the song and pay for the download.

Find Podcasts & Other Audio

Yahoo! Audio Search can also scour the Web for podcasts, digging up online newscasts, interviews, speeches, and radio shows. Searching for podcasts works the same as searching for music. Clicking the link to a podcast brings up a list of Web sites where you’ll find the file and see the format, length, size, and quality of the audio. Click one of the Web site links to listen to or download the podcast.

The third option at Audio Search lets you search Other Audio, a catch-all category that hunts for sound effects, dialogue, and themes from movies and TV shows, and also free music. Clicking the link to one of these files displays the Web sites from which you can download it.

Submit Your Own Sounds

If you record your own music or Podcasts, you can send Yahoo! links to that content to include in the Audio Search results. To learn more about this feature, check out the Web page search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit.

Got An Opinion Or A Question?

Share your feedback about Audio Search with Yahoo! at add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_audiosearch. You can also trade questions, advice, and help with other users by joining the Audio Search discussion forum at add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_audiosearch.

by Lance Whitney

Yahoo! Audio Search Highlights

What it does: Yahoo! Audio Search scours the Internet for audio files. You’ll find music, podcasts, sound bytes, TV and movie dialogue, and sound effects; most of it is for sale, but much of which you can download for free.

How it works: Enter your search term at the Audio Search Web page. You can refine your search to look for Music, Podcasts, Other Audio, or all three. After Yahoo! finds your results, just click the audio title to find the site or service from which you can download and, if required, purchase it.

Sample use: Browse to the Yahoo! Audio Search Page (audio.search.yahoo.com) and enter your search term. Let’s say you’re looking for music by John Lennon. Enter John Lennon in the search field, and Yahoo! delivers not just links to his songs but also podcasts and other content: radio interviews with Lennon, newscasts from the night he was killed, and remembrances from last year’s 25th anniversary of his death.

From the results page, you can narrow your search by type, choosing just music by clicking the Music link. The search refreshes to display only songs by the late Beatle. You find a song you like, John’s recording of “Beautiful Boy.” You click the Sample button to listen to a 30-second clip of it and decide to buy it. Click the song title, and you see that Rhapsody, BuyMusic.com, PassAlong, and Yahoo! Music Unlimited all offer it, with most of them selling it for 99 cents. Click the Download link for Music Unlimited, and up pops the site from which you buy the song.

Suppose you want to listen to news and advice about one of your favorite topics: computers. Go back to the Audio Search page by clicking Yahoo! Audio Search Home and enter computers as your search term. Select Podcasts to refine your search. You’ll then see links to online radio shows discussing computers, audio tutorials on popular software, lectures from Harvard on PC technology, and interviews with tech company execs. Yahoo!’s Podcast results page typically provides two links to play the files: an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) link, which requires that you have an RSS reader, and a My Yahoo! link, which plays the audio through Yahoo!. Click the My Yahoo! link for one of theHarvard lectures and sit back to listen to your free audio education.

Now let’s say that you want to replace your generic Windows sound effects with more interesting sounds, perhaps quotes from a famous TV star. You search for “Homer Simpson” at the main search page and specify Other Audio. You find links to WAV files of Homer’s most memorable lines, including “D’oh” and “Hmmm...beer.” You click the links to download these free files and set them up as your new Windows greeting and exit lines.

With Other Audio you can also find free songs. In a classical mood, you search for the “William Tell Overture” (better known to you children of the ’50s as the “Theme to the Lone Ranger”) and limit the search to Other Audio. You click several of the MP3 and RealAudio links to this classical tune and find a free version by the Symphony Orchestra Of Canada, which you listen to online.

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