Multimedia Trapping - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 165

this syntax shows you that Google does index those iles, but unfortunately
not their contents. In other words, Google can tell you that there's an MP3
ile in a certain place, but not what words are in it, how long it is, etc.
tip
in talking about music online, we can't avoid the fact that there
are legal and non-legal sources of music available. Your searches
will ind you both. When deciding what you're going to download,
take the high road and go for the legal music. that way, you won't
have to worry about the recording industry association of america
(riaa) sending you a subpoena or about downloading something
you don't want—like a virus coming from illegal or shady sites.
he MP3 ile search is, depending on what you're looking for, either useful in
a very narrow way (it certainly gets you few enough results that you should
be able to monitor them easily using a Google Alert) or a silly party trick. If
you're doing genealogy searches, for instance, a general Google search for
MP3 iles might not be helpful. If in your case this type of search falls into
the “silly party trick” category, then you can move away from Google and
try either some other search engines that are audio oriented or some mas-
sive audio archives. In those you might ind narratives and interviews with
people who lived in the area where your family lived a hundred years ago.
tip
try a news search engine if you're looking for Mp3 music down-
loads. Sometimes you're able to ind pointers to new band sites or
Mp3 aggregation sites. try a keyword for the kind of music or au-
dio content you like plus the words “mp3 download” . So you could
search for reggae mp3 download or mashups mp3 download . You
may not get a lot of results, but you will often bump into things
you might not have found otherwise.
Using audio-only search engines
Audio search engines are all over the map in what they ofer and what kind
of search limitations you can use. One thing most of them have in common
is that they're not very easy to trap. With that in mind you really need to
narrow your searches. hankfully the irst tool we're looking at, Singing-
ish, makes narrowing searches really easy.