Rhapsody is expanding its partnership with Yahoo to bring full-song streams to Yahoo search results.
Beginning today (Sept. 17), any music-related search result on Yahoo’s search engine will be able to stream the entire song by selecting a “play” button in the top right of the screen. Rhapsody is powering the full-song streams, meaning non-subscribers can play up to 25 songs in full each month, while paying subscribers can do so an unlimited number of times.
The song is streamed through Yahoo’s FoxyTunes player, which means users can stream the song and still continue browsing or conducting other searches. It also includes an option to add the song to existing Rhapsody playlists.
The effort is clearly an authorized alternative to the music-based search engines like SeeqPod and others that have attracted the attention of record labels for their lack of licensing deals. Those other services search the web for music, and in many cases stream from sources that do not have deals with labels, although some do pay streaming performance fees to performance collecting societies.
Warner Music Group in January filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Seeqpod.
