Internet search giant Yahoo on Thursday trumpeted release of a trial version of software that lets people seek out music, news, speeches and other audio files online.
Yahoo's service weighs into a competitive Internet market where audio-file search programs are offered by companies such as America On Line and Google, according to industry experts.
Yahoo claimed to be coming online with a "major search engine" that lets users sift quickly through 50 million audio files.
These files include podcasts, music, speeches, interviews and news.
The "Yahoo Audio Search" index includes the Silicon Valley company's own content along with music from a list of Web-site partners such as eMusic, GarageBand.com, Napster and Rhapsody.
The new mechanism is linked to Yahoo's recently released video search system, which allows people to find sound to complement images, according to the company.
"By further enhancing the search experience with personalization tools, Yahoo is delivering an innovative model for consumers to use the web to find and listen to audio files of their choice," said Su Li Walker, an analyst with Yankee Group.
Yahoo announced on Monday that it will provide Internauts free daily news clips from the US' CNN and ABC television networks starting next month.
A "beta" version of the audio search software was made available by Yahoo at http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com.
"With Yahoo Audio Search, users have a starting point for finding all audio-related content available on the Web," said John Thrall, head of multi-media engineering at Yahoo Search.
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