Yahoo! Introduces Audio Search

Yahoo! beats Google and Microsoft to the punch with the introduction of Yahoo! Audio Search. With audio search, Yahoo! allows you to search for all kinds of audio files from across the Web, including popular and hard to find music, podcasts, interviews, speeches, newscasts, stand-up comedy, and sound effects. Search for a favorite artist, and you’ll get links to albums, songs, videos, websites, images, as well as being able to click to hear snippets of their songs. If you want to purchase the music, you can hop into Yahoo! Music or find other download locations for an album or a song. For podcast searches, click the "matching: podcasts" link and see the results for that particular podcaster. You can save results to My Web 2.0, with the click of a link which pops up a window where you can tag it and make notes, though I do think that link needs to be a little bolder. Overall, Yahoo’s audio search is a great, and desperately needed tool, though the whole interface is a bit busy and disorganized for my desire…but that’s probably because I’m used to more Googlesque simplicity. Still, until MSN or Google releases their own audio search engine, Yahoo!’s will be the one to beat.