Yahoo! today introduced Yahoo! Audio Search beta. Yahoo! Search is the first major search engine to deliver an audio search product that provides users access to over 50 million audio files from major music services and independent publishers.

Yahoo! Audio Search provides access to a variety of audio files including podcasts, music downloads, albums and spoken word such as newscasts, speeches, and interviews, as well as other audio related information including music videos, album reviews, artist images and artists websites. Yahoo! Audio Search is currently available through Yahoo! Next at http://next.yahoo.com as well as http://audio.search.yahoo.com.

The Yahoo! Audio Search index includes content from the Web and Yahoo!'s Network properties such as Yahoo! Music as well as partnerships with mainstream and independent providers such as eMusic, GarageBand.com, Napster and RealNetworks(R)' Rhapsody. Yahoo! Audio Search is also integrated with Yahoo! Video Search, Yahoo! Image Search, and Yahoo! News Search to provide users with access to other audio related content. In addition, Yahoo! Audio Search enables independent publishers to submit content to the index through Media Really Simple Syndication (Media RSS), providing users open access to original and timely audio content.

Yahoo! Audio Search's integration with My Web 2.0, http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com, Yahoo!'s new social search engine, enables users to save audio searches, creating a personal, searchable Web of favorite audio Web pages. Moreover, My Web 2.0 users can share their musical tastes with their communities by creating RSS feeds of their saved Web pages.

Additionally, Yahoo! Audio Search users that already subscribe to an online music service will benefit from the Preferred Audio Service, a feature which identifies a users' service and finds audio files from their favorite provider allowing a one-click connection to the applicable service. Preferred Audio Service also expands the catalogue of available audio files by offering alternate sources for files the users' preferred service may not include.

Yahoo! Audio Search partners providing reviews, videos and other relevant music information include:

- Allmusic.com

- Billboard.com

- CMT

- Dusted

- Ice Magazine

- Jazz Times

- MTV: Music Television

- RollingStone.com

- VH1

- Vibe

- Spin

To learn more about Yahoo! Audio Search, visit http://audio.search.yahoo.com.