About a year ago, Yahoo created a music artist shortcut to make it easier to find quick details about artists, such as videos, photos, sample song tracks and even their official website links, directly from the search results page. Now, in partnership with online music service Rhapsody, Yahoo music shortcut results allow you to play up to 25 full songs a month rather than 30-second samples. Using Rhapsody’s catalog also expanded the number of audio files are available for playback.

To listen, click a song result and the new media player from Yahoo! Music, called FoxyPlayer will launch near the bottom of the page. You can continue browsing the results page while the player is in use or turn it off at any time with a single click.

To try out the new features, simply search for one of your favorite musical artists at Yahoo search. Yahoo says they’re rolling out the new feature over the coming few hours.

Yahoo! Found Guilty of Mass Copyright Infringement from TorrentFreak reports Yahoo China lost the case over linking to unlicensed music in China.

Didn’t they already lose the case? Well, in April they were ordered to remove those links and ordered to pay 200,000 yuan. But they then appealed that ruling in November. Now the Beijing Court rejected that appeal and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is victorious.

What confuses a lot of people is that Baidu was sued for a similar issue and they won the case against the music labels back in November of 2006.

John Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of the IFPI, said:

We are disappointed that the court did not find Baidu liable, but that judgment was about Baidu’s actions in the past under an old law that is no longer in force.

More coverage can be found at Techmeme.

The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have added inline audio samples to their audio search feature.

So now when you do a search on free bird, you can listen to a quick sample before clicking for more.

You simple click on “Play Sample” and you should hear the audio come out of your speakers.

You can stop playing the sample at any time.

Here is a screen capture:

Odd. Just a year and a half after buying music playlist sharing site Webjay, John Udell notes that Yahoo is closing the service. From the closure notice:

We are sorry to announce that Webjay will be closing its doors at the end of June, 2007. Please take this time to back up any playlists you want to keep. If you are using the XSPF Musicplayer, you may be able to keep it running. See below for instructions on moving the XSPF Musicplayer from Webjay to another host.

The Yahoo Search blog has reported that Yahoo has now integrated their new music lyrics database into the Yahoo search results.

If you perform a search on neil young lyrics at Yahoo, you will see a Yahoo Shortcut for “Neil Young Lyrics – Music Results.”

If you click on the top link it takes you to Yahoo Music Lyrics page for Neil Young.

The searches also work for some song titles with appending “lyrics” to the end, but not all (for example, hotel california lyrics comes up with nothing). The Yahoo Shortcuts page itself doesn’t yet provide help information about the feature.

Ask.com also shows “Smart Answers” for a search on neil young lyrics with links to allmusic.com.