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A beta version of Yahoo's Audio Search will let users find, among other things, music from services like iTunes and Napster as well as its own Music Unlimited.

If you've ever wondered how you got through the day without a means to find the audio to a Colin Powell interview, your wait has ended. Yahoo has unleashed its audio search tool online.

The audio search will look for those type of files on the web, but it will also sift through various music providers, from iTunes to GarageBand and others. Podcasts, sound effects, and other bits can be found through the search. Users of Yahoo's My Web can save their searches there.

Music fans who are current users of a service listed in the Preferences can sign in to Yahoo and save that service as a Preferred Provider. When a search for songs returns a match on that service, a result will appear with a Get It Now On: link to that provider.

Creators and providers of audio content can submit audio for indexing via Yahoo's Media RSS service. Yahoo has created a specification as a module that supplements the RSS 2.0 spec.

USA Today points out that Yahoo will not search through file sharing services, and cites Yahoo Technology Director Bradley Horowitz as saying Yahoo will remove songs from its search if a record label complains about them.

The service will suggest related artists when music searches take place, and will display album covers linked to an artist's releases. Those searches can be filtered to be Web-only, subscription-service only, or both.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.