February 9, 2006

Yahoo Launches Audio Search in UK

Netimperative reports Yahoo! debuts audio search in UK. You can view the Yahoo Audio Search for the UK & Ireland by clicking here. This enables the searching of "Popular and hard to find music", "Podcasts", "Interviews, speeches and newscasts", "Stand-up comedy", and "Sound Effects." More information at Yahoo Audio Search UK learn more page or the FAQs.

Gary covered the news when Yahoo first released Audio search for Yahoo.com on Aug. 4, 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:34 PM | Permalink

January 9, 2006

Yahoo Acquires Webjay

JZ himself (Jeremy Zawodny) posts that Yahoo has acquired Webjay. The official announcement is on the new Yahoo Music blog. Webjay is a music playlist community.

From the Yahoo Music Blog: [Webjay is] a site for easy creation and playback of playlists from the Web. Users can create playlists using music/audio/video from around the Web (with a simple Web form, from scraping a Web page, or with a fancy Ajax interface created by a 3rd party using Webjay APIs), share them with others, include them on their Web sites, browse other users playlists, play the playlists in any media player, or cannibalize the playlists to create new ones.

The blog post adds that the Yahoo Music Engine will incorporate some of these playlisting features and open API's in the future.

Btw, a "social" music recommendation service that I literally downloaded today and have yet to use is Last.FM. You get your own online music profile that you can fill up with the music you like. This information is used to create a personal radio station and to find users who are similar to you. Last.fm can even play you new artists and songs you might like.

Of course, my love and enjoyment for Pandora continues.

Postscript: GoFish is another service that allows users to share playlists with MyGoFish. Danny has a review of the service and examples here.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:43 PM | Permalink

August 4, 2005

Yahoo Releases Audio Search Engine

Yahoo has just launched a beta release of Yahoo Audio Search (YAS).

Speaking as both a searcher and a music/audio junkie, Yahoo has done some impressive work with this first beta release but there is still room for improvement.

First, some background about audio search on the web.

Specialized databases that provide access to audio files found on the "open web" are not a new idea. For example, AltaVista and AllTheWeb began offering them many years ago. Even today, both sites (now a part of Yahoo) continue to provide these services. FindSounds is another example of a specialty database providing access to "open web" audio material.

At the same time other search providers like GoFish provide searchable access to downloadable files (fee-based) from various digital music merchants while Blinkx offers access to streaming audio material (including podcasts) from several sources.

However, what Yahoo is releasing today is different. It's a one-stop, comprehensive service (metasearch, sort of) that allows the user to search, find, and access both "open web" audio files (via a Yahoo crawl) AND audio files from numerous music/audio (fee-based) services from Yahoo's own Music Unlimited, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Emusic, GarageBand.com, and several other services. Of course, to download these tracks you'll need to pay.

According to the the company, Yahoo Audio Search currently offers access and/or info to more than 50 million audio files.

Yahoo Audio Search also allows content producers to submit material using the Yahoo MediaRSS format.

Yahoo Audio Search can be accessed at http://audio.search.yahoo.com or via Yahoo's MyWeb social search service at: http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/. MyWeb users will be able to easily share favorite music searches and pages with others.

YAS not only offers access to audio files but also to music reviews, music videos, and related material licensed from various well-known sources including Billboard, Rolling Stone, and one of my favorite specialty databases, AllMusic.com.

Yesterday, I was able to spend some time checking out a demo of Yahoo Audio Search. Here are a few of the things that I noticed.

Currently, results pages do not show paid listings. No word if/when paid links will be visible
Users can select a preferred "audio service." For example, my preferred service was ITunes.
You'll find links to preview many songs located next to each title on a results page. Useful!!!
There are numerous ways to limit and refine your search results. Impressive.

Results Pages Below and to the left of the search box, on every results page, you'll find three options to refine your result sets to music, podcasts, or "other" audio. Another link allows you to toggle even more limits/refinements onto the page. Clicking the "more options" link allows you to limit by: + Audio Format: AAC, MP3, RAM, WMA, and/or MIDI + Duration: Files greater than or less than one minute + Source: Either Web (aka open web) and Audio Services (ITunes, Rhapsody, etc.) + Releases: Include alternates, imports, EPs, etc. or only "major" releases + You can also sort your results by song title, album title

Entries--Web Audio Each entry for "open web" audio includes the files + Title (if available, I found many files with no title) + File length (for example, 20 seconds, 5 minutes, etc.) + You'll also see how many sources are available where you can download a song or file. This info is hyperlinked to page(s) that offers more file info as well as a direct link to the specific page(s) where you'll find the file.

Entries--Audio Services Each entry for tracks from an audio service include: + Artist + Title + Track Length Clicking the title link will take you to another page the shows what services offer the song, the cost to download, and if the track can be burned or copied. Yes, you can now comparison shop for downloadable music. (-: The page also lists related songs. I'm curious to learn how a related songs are determined. For example, Yahoo Audio Search tells me that White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane is related to Bruce Springsteen's, Born to Run.

On some results page you'll find a matching artist links on the right side of the page. Clicking these links allow you to see all of the material from a music group or solo artist listed in a single location. These pages also include links to images, videos and other material. You can even sort albums by release date and title. Another link takes you to Yahoo Shopping, if you're interested in purchasing the entire disc.

Disappointments and Work to Be Done A major disappointment was clicking the link labeled "reviews" below each entry. Yahoo do better here. Clicking the link runs a web search that includes the word "reviews" and the title of the entry. Results were very poor. If Yahoo is licensing material (including reviews) from various sources (see above) this material should also be available here. Also, lots of "open web" results have "unknown" listed as the artist/performer and almost no other info about why a result is listed. Of course, this is as much an issue of poor metadata (not Yahoo's fault) as it is anything else. Nevertheless, I hope Yahoo works to make improvements. For example, transcripts created using speech recognition might really help for some types of material. However, scalability is also an issue with the amount of web content out there. Yes, content producers using MediaRSS would also help. Finally, Yahoo needs to work on better methods for determining where a file should fall when the music, podcast, and other audio sort option is used. I found lots of problems but again some of this is due to a lack of metadata about each file.

One feature that I would like to see added is the ability to search by song lyrics. GoFish recently started to offer this feature and it can be very useful when attempting to find a song. Trust me on this one, I used to work at a music shop. Also, I would like to see an option to only see results from the "open web."

Bottom Line Again, I'm impressed with this first release of Yahoo Audio Search. However, improvements are still needed. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next release offers in terms of features, relevancy, and organization of results.

I'm also interested to see how Yahoo handles tracks that might be available on the "open web" illegally but also available from a legal, music service.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I'm a music and audio junkie so I plan to spend more quality time with YAS in the very near future. I'll post my findings to the blog. Of course, I'll also continue to use other audio search services.

Oh, in case you're wondering if Google working on a music service? No idea, but I wouldn't doubt it. Btw, they registered the domain GoogleMusic.com a couple of years ago. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 12:01 AM | Permalink

June 2, 2005

Yahoo Gives New Life to Failed TV Music Program

We've read plenty about Yahoo's interest in offering new and original content (in many formats) on their service. Today, the International Herald Tribune/New York Times reports that Yahoo is now offering new, on-demand webcasts of a live concert music program called Pepsi Smash. What makes it more interesting is that this program failed when it aired on the WB last year.

Yahoo hopes "Smash" will also be helpful in promoting it's digital music offerings.

As a program on the WB network, "Smash" attracted an average of just 1.3 million viewers in eight episodes last summer...For the Internet, "Smash" is, in essence, being revived as a cluster of short segments provided on demand, many lasting less than four minutes. "You're sitting at your computer, you can click away, you can do other things, you think short and to the point," said Dave Goldberg, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Music. "People getting it right away is really important."

Posted by Gary Price at 7:16 PM | Permalink

May 10, 2005

Yahoo More Than Search, Says CEO & New Yahoo Music Service Coming Wednesday

Globes Online, a business news site from Israel, has just posted an article that several comments comments from Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel, titled: "Yahoo is more than just a search."

In the interview Semel says: Google is a very good search company, and Yahoo! is also a very good search company. You musn?t forget, however, that Yahoo! is more than just search. We have many functions, and we have a great many competitors in each function and in each vertical in which we operate, whether it?s news, sports, finance, or games.?

and speaking of other Yahoo functions, numerous news organizations are reporting that Yahoo will launch its new online music service tomorrow.

The new subsciption-based service ($6.99 a month, $4.99 during beta period) named Yahoo! Music Unlimited includes lots of links to other Yahoo properties. From Yahoo to launch new flagship music service at News.com:

Yahoo also has spent considerable time building links to its other products, such as the company's popular instant messaging application, with the aim of making community and legal music-sharing among subscribers a core part of the service...Sources say the service will also be tied into the Yahoo Messenger service, allowing subscribers to chat and share playlists with each other while they're on the computer. Some elements of the service may be aimed particularly at teenagers, who avidly use online social tools to explore new music, with a pitch to parents indicating that Yahoo Music is a safe, legal way to share music, sources noted.

If you want to know about all of the bells and whistles, this news release has the details.

Finally, we blogged last week that Yahoo is currently developing of music search engine. We also noticed that Google registered the GoogleMusic.com domain a couple of years ago. No word on what, if anything, G might be up to in this arena.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:38 PM | Permalink

May 5, 2005

Report: Yahoo Developing Music Search Engine

News.com reports that Yahoo is developing a music search engine that according to the article:

The specialty engine will let people search on an artist's name, for example, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music.

Yahoo's Jeff Karnes would not confirm the News.com report at this time. However, the article says that the service should be available in the next few months.

From the way the article reads, the new service sounds like (no pun intended) some type of federated search tool that will simultaneously query music availability from a couple online music services and their own MusicMatch service and merge results into one results list.

The News.com article mentions that along with song availability the service will also retrieve info about the artist, album, etc. from their Yahoo Music database. Here's what a bio of The Rolling Stones presently looks like via Yahoo Music.

I've said for a long time that federated search technology will be one of the "next" big things.

Yahoo purchased MusicMatch last September for $160 million. In February, Yahoo rebranded all of their music properties as Yahoo Music.

The Yahoo Music brand also includes the popular LAUNCHcast streaming audio music service.

When I posted the other day about music information retrieval research at Sun (cool stuff), AllMusic.Com is primary "go to" site for music/artist/performer reference information. This page lists some of what you can do with their powerful advanced search interface. I've also use the Tower Records online database and the web version of GraceNote, as music info research tools.

In addition to iTunes, Napster, Microsoft, and Rhapsody, Yahoo will also be competing with services like SingingFish and GoFish.

Finally, if you're looking for non-musical audio files (sound effects, music samples) on the open web this review of FindSounds.com by Chris might be of interest.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:52 PM | Permalink

March 8, 2005

Yahoo Gets Ready to Open Digital Music Store

It looks like Apple's iTunes, Real's Rhapsody, and other digital music download services will have a new competitor, Yahoo.

According to a Silicon.com article: iTunes gets a Yahoo! rival, Yahoo! will to unveil a digital music service and player by the end of this month.

As previously reported, Yahoo! has been working on the project along with digital-music wholesaler MusicNet since before the $160m purchase of rival music company Musicmatch. Sources familiar with Yahoo!'s plans said the new store and software had been scheduled to debut early this week but that the launch date was pushed back.

Yahoo! recently rebranded all of their music properties, including the top-rated LAUNCH, as Yahoo! Music. Last September, Yahoo! purchased Musicmatch, an online jukebox and digital music download service for $160 million in cash.

Btw, in case you're wondering, Google owns the domain name, GoogleMusic.com. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 9:27 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2005

Yahoo! Japan Will Launch Music Download Service

Several sources including Kyodo News and AFP are reporting that Yahoo Japan is planning to launch an music distrubution service called Yahoo! Music Download. The service will be provided via an alliance with Japan's Label Gate, a "joint venture of 18 firms, mainly music labels, which offers its own Net-based download service under the Mora brand..." Music labels include Toshiba-EMI Inc., Pony Canyon Inc., Yamaha Corp. and Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:01 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Yahoo! Rebrands Its Music Properties

Yet more news from Yahoo's media division.

Today, the company is announcing that it's rebranding, Launch, and its other online music properties as Yahoo! Music.

Yahoo! Music will unify all its music products and services under a single brand identity. The Yahoo! Music branding will be rolled out in the coming months to international properties that currently have LAUNCH sites, including Europe, Australia, and Yahoo! en Espanol.

You'll spot the new Yahoo! Music logo on the top left side of the page.

In 2004, Yahoo acquired music download and online jukebox service, Musicmatch for $160 Million in cash. The new Yahoo Music logo is also now visible on this site.

I wonder if one of these days Google will begin trying to organize (and sell) all of the world's music. Only time will tell. We do know that Google owns the GoogleMusic.com domain.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:19 PM | Permalink

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