RSSYahoo Music Service Officially Launches
By Nate Mook | Published August 18, 2005, 12:06 PM
Yahoo! Music Unlimited, the company's subscription music service, has left beta and Yahoo is preparing a massive marketing blitz to promote its new offering. Powered by the Yahoo! Music Engine, the service brings to the table over 1 million songs at 192kbps with a cost 60 percent less than rivals Napster and Real.
Despite claims that Yahoo's low beta pricing wouldn't last, the company has kept the subscription service priced at just $4.99 USD per month when paid annually or $6.99 USD monthly. Customers can stream or download an unlimited number of songs to their computer, as well as transfer tracks to portable devices.
As with any such service, the songs will become unplayable if the subscription lapses. However, Yahoo also offers a la carte downloads for just 79-cents. Those who wish to forego the monthly subscription fee can also download individual songs for 99-cents - the same pricing as Apple's iTunes Music Store.
Downloads can be played on a total of five PCs or transferred to compatible portable devices. Because tracks are in Microsoft's WMA format, however, they are not compatible with Apple's popular iPod.
To coincide with the official launch, Yahoo! Music Unlimited has received a facelift and now sports a more refined interface. The Yahoo! Music Engine, which also serves as a full media player replacement, has been tweaked as well since its beta debut in May.
Speed and performance of the software was a major area of enhancement in the final release, developers say. Plug-ins, which can add support for Shoutcast or other features, still play a central role as well.
Community features are not limited to plug-ins, however. Yahoo! Music Unlimited attempts to differentiate itself from iTunes and other services by focusing on personalization. Users can setup profiles of their musical likes and dislikes, which are used by Yahoo to create custom home page of recommended artists and songs.
Yahoo is readying a major advertising campaign called "This is Huge" to kick off the general release. Commercials will be shown during the MTV Video Music Awards on August 28 with the tagline: "Over A Million Songs - 5 Bucks a Month - This is Huge." Ad placements are also planned through the end of the year.
Company officials say they want to establish Yahoo! Music Unlimited as "the standard" service for digital music fans by hyping its low price. Yahoo will utilize its extensive online presence to push the music service using banner ads and tie-ins to Yahoo! Messenger.
Future iterations of the software promise to bring faster device transfers and improved syncing, along with better playlist generation and celebrity playlists - a feature offered in Tunes. Yahoo's music catalog, which is powered by MusicNet, will also be enhanced with more charts, exclusive content and classical music.
Yahoo! Music Engine runs on Windows XP and Windows 2000. Yahoo! Music Unlimited is initially available only in the United States, but international support is expected to follow.
Why couldnt they have stuck with MP3 format they had to go down that path and push WMA solution down our throat. Bad news to all the ipod users out there. You wont be using this service. If it was $5 month for MP3s I would be in, but for WMA I will pass. Sorry M$ and Yahoo I prefer a more universal standard. Maybe Google will get it right ;)
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|because MP3's dont' have any kind of security in the standard...
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|If it says Yahoo on it, it's going to dig into the registry and drag the entire system to a crawl - the rash of big yellow "Y"'s on the your screen is the first symptom of a bad infection.
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|I really think you got yahoo confused with aol.
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|I just cant see paying for something that is never really yours. This is why Itunes is so popular...the songs you pay for belong to YOU and can be burned to a CD, put on 5 different machines or download onto Ipods. Subscription music is BS.
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|Can't see paying for something that is never really yours...
I guess you don't pay for cable or satellite tv either...
while you're paying $.99 for every single song, I'll pay my $5/month and listen to ANY song i want as many times as I want on any computer I want, transfer as many songs as I like to my mp3 player, and for those rare cases I need to make a CD I'll pay $.79 for the songs.
$5/month for unlimited songs/month...how many songs a month can you get for $5 from itunes? 5 songs...
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|The DRM and Music Engine software are still buggy. In particular, the client lacks QoS feature, so can easily clog your internet connection. Also the interface does not support multiple windows, making common tasks cumbersome (for example, checking if you see a song, downloading a copy, finding out it's already there, playing it, deleting it). And the interface keeps kicking you back to the Yahoo Unlimited portal page feature the latest Britney Spears etc. headlines.
So, you get a lot for $5, but don't expect something as slick as iTunes.
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|192kbps is more than fine. anything more is just to big anyways. having every song that is 320kbps is a bit large for small mp3 players.
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|I'm pretty happy with the service. I've got a Dell Pocket DJ (with REAL buttons) with about 850 tracks on it at any given time, the vast majority downloaded from Yahoo. I download a couple of CDs a week, and also stream music to my computers at work and home. Pretty cool for $5 a month. And it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that it's all completely legal.
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|This definitely looks like a good deal. $5 a month for unlimited songs is definitely good. And 10 cents of regular downloads is also very nice.
I have to admit I've been using MSN, though. Mostly because I'm an MSN guy and they had a buy one-get 5 free deal when you sign up. But hey, how come he mentions Rhapsody and Napster (and of course iTunes), but not MSN Music?! If you ask me, MSN is a very nice store largely because it's internet based; there's only a small plug-in to download and after that, browse to music.msn.com and you're ready to buy! Just my personal preference, however.
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|it's different you know, file sharing sometimes offers low quality files, if it's Yahoo! or some iTunes, they ripped the song from the original material, even if it's low bitrate, it's most likely to be of better quality.
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|5 bucks is cheap but if it isn't 320 bitrate i would rather go with file sharing for free.
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|> "Downloads can be played on a total of five PCs or transferred to compatible portable devices."
Anyone know if you can burn the music you purchase off of this storefront to CD?
[Edit] Checked a screenshot: Nero fast CD-burning is shown on the left-hand column. Apparently the answer is yes.
Next question, can it be burned to AUDIO CD, or just MP3-CD?
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|It can be burned to audio CD only if you paid for the download individually (79-cents), not through a subscription.
Obviously, people could just stream all 1 million songs and burn them all to CDs, then cancel their subscription, so there must be some restrictions.
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|Yahoo bought Musicmatch Jukebox awhile ago, I wonder how that fits into all of this?
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|Musicmatch will eventually be merged into Yahoo! Music Engine. Version 1.1 will likely bring the two applications closer together.
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|Looks interesting. I use allofmp3.com, which is a pay as you go system.
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|Yahoo may have something here. paying only $5-$7 a month for unlimited downloads. we will just have to see how well it does.
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|I've just downloaded it... Tried it.. and uninstalled it.. Call me picky but it has a cheap feel to it.. and the search leave a lot to be desired.. it feels as if it is hearding you, not searching for you. I have Rhapsody and it has a cleaner feel to it and it's search functions are far superior.. Too much is weighed in on "sharing your music list with others" .. While that is nice.. I've got my own taste in music and I don't expect others to have the same. It's still new.. so I suppose there is a lot of room left for growth..
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|I just tried the rhapsody...I'm not too crazy about it. The nice thing about yahoo is that you can play all their songs for $5/month...you can even burn cd's without paying extra...the only time you pay 0.79 for a song is if you want to actually download it. Rhapsody gives you a few free songs and then you gotta pay for them, even just to listen. I rather just pay $5/month and know I can play anything, anytime and even make cd's to listen in the car.
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|You are mistaken. I have YMU. For 5 bucks a month, you CANNOT burn those songs to a CD unless you pay the 79 cents per track. Any song you add to your music through YMU can be downloaded to your PC, put on certain portable devices, but NOT burned to a CD unless you pay the xtra.
Anyways, I am very happy with the service. I sold my iPod and bought a Dell DJ. Couldn't be happier.
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|You're right I was wrong...you can't burn them to CD unless you pay $.59 for the song...but you can transfer them over to a portable device (unless it's an ipod, which is what I have:( ) free with the subscription.
But yea, I'm very happy with it too, very good service for $8/month (5 if you sign up for a year).
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|Niro, you are a FOUNTAIN of misinformation. Keep up the good work there.
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