(August 4 2005) Today Yahoo! launched the beta version of Audio Search, a service that lets you search millions of audio files. Importantly, this includes songs from iTunes, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, GarageBand, eMusic, Napster, and other sites that let you download music.

Yahoo! is the first search engine to provide a service that searches songs available from the major sites for music download, something that will definitely not hurt them in their competition with Google.

Yahoo! Audio has a clean and simple user interface. The start page features a very prominent search box and some tips for using the new service.

If you search for an artist, the search results give you a list of songs. You can click an icon to listen to a sample or click on the song title to get a list of sites that will let you buy the song, complete with prices, file formats, and more. Each song is also has a link to information about the album it is taken from and a link that will search for reviews. Very convenient.

Not surprisingly, you will not find songs from Kazaa and Grokster, peer to peer file-sharing software that is often use to trade copyrighted music.

More about Yahoo! Audio Search:
From Yahoo!
From USA Today