Yahoo Online Music Service

[MacRumors]

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Yahoo has announced that they will also be entering the online music download market with a new subscription-based service.

Yahoo's new service will offer unlimited access to a library of 1 million songs for $6.99 a month. The new service is akin to Napster's current "To Go" service which also offers unlimited access to songs for a monthly fee. Napster's service, however, costs $14.95/month.

With both services, users have access to any of the available songs while paying the monthly access fee, but loses playback ability if the service is discontinued. Use of songs is limited to supported MP3 players and can not be burned to CD without an extra fee.

This business model differs from Apple's iTunes Music Store which "sells" individual songs for $.99 US. While there has been some speculation about Apple adopting a subscription service, publicly Steve Jobs has rejected this business model.

[Poff]

This is great! More competition = better for customers!

Now bring on iTMS Subscription!

[virividox]

yup the fact yahoo are in on it, means apple will have to up the ante and this is good for us

[Veldek]

Wow, only half the price of Napster. I think they'll have to do the math again. I wonder whether this new subscription service has a DRM which can be as easily hacked as Napster's.

[crap freakboy]

its got to be good for music lovers.

[Rocket Rion]

If you buy a year subscription it comes out to 4.99 a month.

But I hate WMA.

[iJaz]

This is bad news.....


for Napster

[AliensAreFuzzy]

I wonder if that same exploit is there that there is in Napster.

[kiwi-in-uk]

More competition = better for customers = lower margins -> less profitable. It will be interesting to see the shake-out when it happens a little way down the track.

[buryyourbrideau]

why would you want to rent songs and then just have to end up paying extra in the end to burn them to a cd-r. im going to stick with the itunes

[plasticparadox]

God, they're going to be selling individual songs for 0.79? Can't believe someone would undercut Walmart. If this new Yahoo store is a success, I'm sure 0.79 will be the new standard price for individual songs. Sounds good to me

[tamtam]

Own vs. rent songs. Rent just does not work for me.

[homerjward]

hmm...if one has sbc yahoo! internet does one get a discount on this? sounds really awesome and for 7 bucks a month...i almost wouldnt mind my mom's pc...
edit: of course, launch and their lack of support for mac os x, or anything other than netscape 4.x in OS 8/9 still has me really pissed off.

[Porchland]

I'm all for competition keeping Apple on its toes, but the window is closing on the downloadable music market. One of Apple's competitors is going to have to get some traction with the buffet model before Apple is forced into a decision; if Apple added a monthly plan today, it would simply be to squash everyone else out.

By the time Yahoo or Napster or whoever is able to make any kind of move in the music market, Apple will be selling episodes of "Nip/Tuck" in HD for 99 cents a pop through its iWatch service that you can stream to your HDTV through Airport Express 2 or download to your iTablet.

Yahoo is swimming in the kiddie pool.

[amberashby]

The subscription services are a Pirate's dream. $60 for a year of music. Any song you want can be downloaded and cracked.

Not for me, but I think that is the primary reason for anyone wanting a subscription service.

[munkle]

A music library of 1million songs doesn't sound like an awful lot. How many songs does Napster have? And with such a low margin, I wonder how much makes it back to the artist?

About renting vs owning, just because you prefer one doesn't mean the other alternative isn't viable. The market is big enough for both. In fact I think in the long term a subscription model will prove to be more popular, as long as the monthly subscription cost is low and the price per song is competitive.

[DeepDish]

I don't want to "rent" my music. I don't buy much music from iTunes. Most of my 20 some gig of Apple Lossless music is from my CD collection.

But Apple should go ahead and give people a choice. Do both the current model and a subscription model at the same time. Get it over with.

Hopefully most people (I can't people I saying this) are smart enough to buy their music instead of just renting it.

Ok, Ok, I do get some music from allofmp3, but stopped a couple of months ago because I got scared. There, I got that off my chest, I feel better.

By the way, how can the RIAA want to up Apple's 99 cent price while letting yahoo and walmart sell songs for less then Apple, are they starting to play favorites against Apple?

[i.Feature]

I can't understand why anyone would pay for what is essentially satellite radio with less options. I understand you get to pick which songs you want loaded but that said satellite radio stations are quite narrowly marketed meaning you can pretty much always get what you want. Not too mention you get much, much more content.

If I have an mp3 player i want it to play my music. The key word being "my". I want to own it. If i wanted to rent music, I'd buy a satellite radio reciever.

[munkle]

Originally Posted by i.Feature

I can't understand why anyone would pay for what is essentially satellite radio with less options. I understand you get to pick which songs you want loaded but that said satellite radio stations are quite narrowly marketed meaning you can pretty much always get what you want. Not too mention you get much, much more content.

If I have an mp3 player i want it to play my music. The key word being "my". I want to own it. If i wanted to rent music, I'd buy a satellite radio reciever.

The key word being "you". You want to own your music, doesn't mean everybody does. Of course if you really wanted to "own" your music, you'd buy a CD without any DRM restrictions.

Yahoo!/Napster are providing an alternative. If you don't like it, don't use - simple. Doesn't mean they shouldn't provide the service for people who do though.

[jackc]

I just saw a segment about this on CNN. The anchor (I don't know his name) added that he doesn't like the subscription model, and said iTunes is much easier.

[LSlugger]

I rated this negative, because it's Windows/WMA only. However, I think there is a market for a subscription service. I'm very cautious about buying a $15 album: I'll rarely buy it on the strength of one single. I'm less cautious about buying it used for $6. I've filled in my collection with several $1 iTunes tracks from albums I'd probably never buy. When it comes to a subscription-based service, the only thing you have to waste is your time.

I think i.Feature is on to something, by comparing this to radio, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but they can add subscriptions to the menu. So long as unrestricted, lossless CDs are still available, I don't mind having another choice.

[xli_ne]

You can share your music across their Yahoo! messenger. Probably just be able to listen and not copy, but its still kinda of a cool feature.

[bobringer]

Originally Posted by AliensAreFuzzy

I wonder if that same exploit is there that there is in Napster.

There is nothing specific about Napster that is hackable that is different than any other type of audio being played on your computer. The actual files aren't hacked... the audio output of your computer is just captured as a non-DRM'd file. The only problem here is that compressing the audio a second time causes a loss in quality.

By the definition of the "napster exploit"... every piece of audio coming out of your computer is hackable, including Yahoo.

[stephenli]

it should be far from attractive to mac users like us, as
it won't support any iPod, right?

[alandail]

How are the artists supposed to make any money off of this model? Yahoo will need 10 million subscribers to bring in the same monthly revenue the iTunes store brings in right now. Since there aren't even that many MP3 players out there that are compatible with this Yahoo service, where are they going to get the customers? And without the customers, where is the revenue going to come from that will cause artists to put their music on the yahoo service?