Yahoo Launches Audio Search (impressive)

Saw this on Insi­de­Goo­gle,

quote:

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Yahoo has appa­rently deci­ded that, now that they have an ad net­work tar­ge­ted at blog­gers, it is time for them to release all of their blog-related ser­vi­ces in deve­lop­ment. As a result, here is Yahoo Audio Search, which can find you pod­casts. Accor­ding to The New York Times, Yahoo claims to have inde­xed 50 million music, voice and other audio files.

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.

You can refine your searches by music, pod­casts or other audio, by song, artist or album, by for­mat (RAM, MP3, MIDI, WMA or AAC) by dura­tion (more or less than a minute), by web & audio ser­vi­ces or audio ser­vi­ces only, and by major relea­ses or to inc­lude alter­na­tes, imports, EPs, etc.. Smartly, the pod­cast results have links to the RSS feeds.

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http://​audio​.search​.yahoo​.com/

This is an extre­mely nifty release. Take these exam­ple searches and results:
(Pur­po­sely tes­ting with les­ser known artists)

Vene­tian Sna­res: Search
Clic­king the artist brings up a dis­co­graphy and list of albums.
Clic­king the song gives a list of legal loca­tions for down­load, cost, qua­lity, for­mat, abi­lity to burn to cd,
Quick links inc­lude Y! music link to artist, bio­graphys and reviews.
There is also a matching artists page on the right hand side to give quick access to dis­co­graphies of searched terms.

From the dis­co­graphy page:
For­mat: Album Cover, Title (Record Label, Year of Release)
Sort relea­ses by popu­la­rity, date and title.
On the right Yahoo auto­ma­ti­cally searches ima­ges, the web and video and dis­plays the first results from each in a sin­gle column.
Find CD link under each album links to Yahoo shop­ping and gives a list of online out­lets to purchase the cd.
For more well known artists there are “Simi­lar artist” links also.

Clic­king an album cover takes you to the ” album brow­ser”:
This lets you quickly browse an artists albums. On clic­king from the brow­ser you are pre­sen­ted with a trac­klis­ting and all the avai­la­ble legal online down­load loca­tions for that song.

You can also select your pre­fe­rred audio ser­vice from one of these:

quote:

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None
Artist­Di­rect
Audio­Lunch­box
Buy​Mu​sic​.com
dMu­sic
eMu­sic
Epi­to­nic
Gara­ge­Band
iTu­nes
Live­down­loads
MP34U
MSN Music
Music­match
Naps­ter
Pas­sA­long
Real­Pla­yer Music Store
Rhap­sody
SoundC­lick
Yahoo! Music Unli­mi­ted

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Moving on to Pod­casts:
Search for engad­get: Engad­get Pod­cast
Notice the last published date and direct link to the RSS feeds.
Here’s another pod­cast search: BBC

There’s also an “other audio” option which I have yet to try.