alik_05
05-06-2005, 03:04 PM
Yahoo developing an audio search engine - [Technology]
Web giant Yahoo is developing a search engine for finding downloadable songs and music data from across the Internet.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company plans to introduce the music search engine within the next couple of months, according to a source familiar with the service. 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. Jeff Karnes, Yahoo's director of media search, declined to comment on development of an audio search engine. "I can't talk about that right now," Karnes said in an interview Wednesday.
Yahoo has invested heavily on music services, and considers audio and video cornerstones of the company's future. In addition to buying song outlet MusicMatch for $160 million, Yahoo is working on another music service in conjunction with rival MusicNet. The company has also started to streamline its music and multimedia properties over the past several months, changing the name of its Launch site to Yahoo Music and consolidating its entertainment businesses in a Santa Monica, Calif., office near Hollywood. Search technology is considered the key to navigating the Internet's growing music and video collections, as well as the Web itself. Yahoo not only is developing media and online communities to lure visitors, it is attempting to use its media-search engines to connect with Web surfers outside the Yahoo network. That way, Yahoo can build its audience and likely expand its multibillion-dollar search-advertising business.
"It makes sense because Yahoo's got access to all this music to begin with," said Gary Stein, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "Music needs better search, and by looking at the structured data of music--title, genre, etc., they could provide a better experience." Under the purview of Yahoo's search technology group, the company also is investing in video search. This week, the company pushed its video search engine, Yahoo Video Search, out of its test phase and signed partnerships with several TV programmers, including Bloomberg, MTV and the Discovery Channel, to make their content searchable online.
An estimated 24.5 million people visited Yahoo Music in March, according to market researcher ComScore Networks.
Source: CNET
Web giant Yahoo is developing a search engine for finding downloadable songs and music data from across the Internet.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company plans to introduce the music search engine within the next couple of months, according to a source familiar with the service. 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. Jeff Karnes, Yahoo's director of media search, declined to comment on development of an audio search engine. "I can't talk about that right now," Karnes said in an interview Wednesday.
Yahoo has invested heavily on music services, and considers audio and video cornerstones of the company's future. In addition to buying song outlet MusicMatch for $160 million, Yahoo is working on another music service in conjunction with rival MusicNet. The company has also started to streamline its music and multimedia properties over the past several months, changing the name of its Launch site to Yahoo Music and consolidating its entertainment businesses in a Santa Monica, Calif., office near Hollywood. Search technology is considered the key to navigating the Internet's growing music and video collections, as well as the Web itself. Yahoo not only is developing media and online communities to lure visitors, it is attempting to use its media-search engines to connect with Web surfers outside the Yahoo network. That way, Yahoo can build its audience and likely expand its multibillion-dollar search-advertising business.
"It makes sense because Yahoo's got access to all this music to begin with," said Gary Stein, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "Music needs better search, and by looking at the structured data of music--title, genre, etc., they could provide a better experience." Under the purview of Yahoo's search technology group, the company also is investing in video search. This week, the company pushed its video search engine, Yahoo Video Search, out of its test phase and signed partnerships with several TV programmers, including Bloomberg, MTV and the Discovery Channel, to make their content searchable online.
An estimated 24.5 million people visited Yahoo Music in March, according to market researcher ComScore Networks.
Source: CNET