Yahoo tests new audio search feature

Yahoo Inc. on Thursday will begin testing a new search engine feature that will pore through millions of songs offered by popular Internet music services like iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster.

The free service, available at http://audio.search.yahoo.com, boasts an index of more than 50 million audio files, including newscasts, speeches and interviews posted online, as well as the Internet's deepening pool of "podcasts" - recordings made to be played on a computer or digital device like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod player. The index identifies the content by reading information - known as "metadata" - embedded in the files.