In conjunction with Yahoo! Music’s new partnership with Rhapsody, we are pleased to announce the recent rollout of several improvements to Yahoo! Search’s music artist “WOW” shortcut originally launched in the Fall of 2007.

Now, in addition to gaining access to all of the artist background that you could before, you can also play up to 25 full songs a month, as opposed to the 30-second samples from before. And, by tapping into the vast catalog of songs available on Rhapsody, we’ve expanded the number of audio files that are available for playback and increased the number of tracks in the shortcut from three songs to four. If you want to look over a greater list of songs, you can now link directly to Yahoo! Music right from the shortcuts; full song playback will soon be enabled in Yahoo! Music as well, so stay tuned.

Yahoo! Search is using the FoxyPlayer (formerly known as the Yahoo! Media Player) to power the new Search experience. The player is easy-to-use, offers full functionality for song playback, and includes an expandable playlist tab. Users can continue browsing the results page while the player is in use, as search results will continue to scroll while the player stays in place near the bottom of the browser window. The player can be turned off at any time with a single click, or by simply navigating away from the Search results page. Try it out with a few of my favorites or go to Yahoo! Search and search for your own.

Pink Floyd
Johnny Cash
The Mars Volta

There’s no need to sign in to get your 25 full length streams. Just click a play button and the full length track will start playing. If you listen to all 25 songs before your 30 day period is up, you’ll hear 30 second samples until 30 days have passed from the time you first clicked play. If you are already a Rhapsody Unlimited subscriber, you can listen to an unlimited number of songs through the FoxyPlayer. Just click the “powered by Rhapsody” logo in the player and click the link to sign in on the next page.

We at Yahoo! Music are pleased to have helped Yahoo! Search become the first major Search engine to offer full-song playback directly from the Search results page. We are confident our users will appreciate the enhancements we’ve made to the FoxyPlayer and music artist WOW shortcuts. Keep an eye out for more Rhapsody-related releases down the road, as we are planning several additional updates to showcase even more of Rhapsody’s deep music catalog in the near future.

For more information on our partnership with Rhapsody and how the FoxyPlayer works with Yahoo! Search, check out our help page.

Dave Warmerdam
Yahoo! Music

Today Yahoo! released Yahoo! Video, a great new way to find, discover, and share videos. Kudos to my man Ethan and the crack team of engineers who built it — I gotta admit, it’s pretty dope.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “What’s different about Yahoo! Video? I can already go to YouTube and iFilm to find stupid videos to email to my friends when I’m bored at work.” Well, here are a few reasons to check it out:

• Yahoo! Video helps you to find videos from across the web as well as videos that people have uploaded themselves, one of the only sites that combines the best of both worlds. It’s got the greatest selection of videos around. For example, you can find almost 10,000 music videos from Yahoo! Music in Yahoo! Video. That’s ten thousand music videos from artists both big and small. Just search for one of your favorite bands, or check out this page to see all of our videos in their glory. There are also videos from sites like AOL, YouTube and Grouper if for some reason you want videos from sites other than Yahoo! Music (I can’t think of why you would, but hey, you never know).
• You can easily keep track of the videos you like by saving them as bookmarks in an RSS reader, a great tool for storing videos that you can access from any computer and any browser (previously I said this was done through My Web, but it’s actually done through the Yahoo! Video RSS reader, and you can export a video channel to your own RSS reader if you’re so inclined. My Web is still a great tool though). Even better, you can subscribe to a feed from any source to keep up with all the new videos coming in from your favorite sites. Check out the feed of Yahoo! Music videos here.
• For all you amateur filmmakers and videographers, you can upload your own content and let millions of Yahoo! users watch it. That’s right, you too can post that video footage of your cat skateboarding or your friend getting hit (in the face) with a football. So go ahead, share those great video clips with the world!

Here in the Yahoo! Music offices, we’re most excited that the new Yahoo! Video gives us another way to help people find great music videos. So take a look, subscribe to Yahoo! Music in Yahoo! Video, poke around and watch some videos. And be sure to check out
the Video team’s blog for an on-going look at the product and how it can help the video enthusiast community.

Michael Spiegelman
Yahoo! Music

It’s pretty understandable if you didn’t know that Yahoo! launched the Audio Search product a few months ago. This week, we decided to give it a little more prominence by giving it a tab on the Yahoo! Front Page. You can use it to find music from Yahoo! Music Unlimited as well as other, lesser-known services like Rhapsody, eMusic and that Apple product I keep hearing so much about. My good friend Ethan Fassett from Yahoo! Search gives the lowdown here.

It’s pretty cool, so check it out and tell us what you think.

Michael Spiegelman
Yahoo! Music

Yahoo!’s Audio Search went live tonight.  Use it to search for music across the Web or from all the available music services.  Find Podcasts, such as Zoe Radio.  Find random train noises or spooky halloween sounds.  If it makes noise, you can find it on Yahoo! Audio Search.

For the full how/why of Y! Audio Search, read Ethan’s excellent post on the Yahoo! Search Blog.

Congrats to Ethan, Dave, and the rest of the crew who pulled this off.  Kick ass.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music