The service isn’t limitless, though: You’ll be able to listen to 25 full-length tracks a month. After that, you’ll be prompted to pay for a Rhapsody streaming subscription. If you turn it down, you’ll only be able to listen to 30-second samples until the start of the next month.

On the whole, the service works surprisingly well. Searching for an available artist brings up a box at the top of the results with play buttons for four popular songs and the option to see more songs. Once you click play, a second player box opens at the bottom of the search results. You can still navigate around the page with the box open and the song playing — it’ll stay at the bottom of the window — but once you click to any other page, the box and the song both go away.

I’m reluctant to say it, but this actually isn’t a horrible idea. It may be one of Yahoo’s first moves that does something to add value into its search product — a novel concept. Will it get people to switch over from Google? Likely not. But it might get them to use Yahoo a handful of times a month for music-specific searching, and that’s at least something.

In any event, it reeks far less of desperation than Microsoft’s “we’ll pay you to use our search engine” idea.

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The deal — branded as V CAST Music — will give users the option of getting unlimited music downloads to their phones for $15 a month. The charge includes the option to download on two other compatible phones or PCs. There’s also a per-song download option, costing $1.99 a pop.

The service is now available on the LG Decoy, LG Dare, MOTO W755, Samsung SCH-u550, Samsung Glyde, and Samsung Juke phones. Some other phones can get a store-initiated software upgrade to gain support.

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