Yahoo! gets wired for sound

By Steve Malone

Posted on 5 Aug 2005 at 11:36

Having now indexed text, images and video the developers at Yahoo! have now introduced an audio search facility indexing millions of sound files, from special effects to music files.

The system claims to have indexed some 50 million assorted audio files ranging from clips of horror screams and words of wisdom through to interviews and speeches to Wagner's Ring cycle, if you want it. The sounds are in most of the popular formats including .wav, MP3, WMA among others. It has even indexed podcasts available as XML feeds.

Yahoo! audio also hooks into some of the biggest music downloads services which offer tracks for sale. among the providers listed are iTunes, Napster, Garageband and its own Yahoo! Music Unlimited service.

In all eighteen different music providers are included. For extra convenience, the service is customisable to allow searches to go to music providers with which the user already has an account. If you aren't sure, it is possible to compare the prices and formats of the different services.

Even so, some of what the spiders pull up is copyright material. As with Yahoo! Images, the Yahoo! frame at the top of page clearly indicates that this might be copyright material. However, if Yahoo! audio turns out to be a convenient way to find music files, the company might expect a visit from the RIAA.

While the service is fine for finding music and other clearly marked audio files, like streamed speeches, some is quite well hidden. Because Yahoo! audio doesn't link directly to the file but to the page it is on, sometimes it is hard to actually locate it. For example, while the Yahoo crawlers might find and index a .wav sound sample on a page, it doesn't mean it is necessarily clearly signposted on the page.