Sunnyvale, California — It is quite apparent that music searches comprise a large number of searches on the web today. To overcome this cumbersome tasks, Google Inc., last week unveiled the Music Onebox — a special new music search product that allows users stream songs in their entirety for free. But Yahoo has long been a player in music search, and just yesterday Yahoo Video responded by improving its music video search offering and browsing capabilities.
A Yahoo representative explained in an email to WebProNews, “Yahoo! Video Search is introducing an easier way for people to explore their favorite music artists. The new video search music refiner taps into the ‘Web of Things’ to intelligently present the most popular albums and songs for artist or band queries so you can explore music artists in an intuitive way.”
Users can now easily explore into albums and songs by their favorite music artist in Yahoo! Video Search. When you search for a song or artists, Yahoo will pull-out music videos of the most popular songs and albums for that artists or band. It appears that most of the songs are collected from YouTube, Last.fm and other music sites.
So for instance if you search for U2 on Yahoo Video will display a list of the band’s albums, such as The Joshua Tree, and the music videos for popular songs, such as “Beautiful Day”. When you click on an album, you will see the music videos for all of the songs on the album. If you click on an album or song, it will show videos for the album or song in an overlay page.
This seems to work only with artists and bands of a certain popularity. You can view the left sidebar filter for U2, Foo Fighters and Coldplay, but not for Paramore, Jet or The Swell Season. You get the left rail for Frank Sinatra but not Dean Martin.
The left panel contains albums and songs. Click on one to see videos related to your selection.
The only unusual appearance is the new “Twitter Videos” box — unless there is a very new music video out, few people are likely to care what clips are being shared. Also, the “Buzz topics” probably would not relate. The section does not do any harm, though.
So the next time you are in a blissful mood to watch music videos, consider giving Yahoo Video Search a chance. For at least some bands, the upgrade is in effect and working quite well.