Yahoo Online Music Service

[maxterpiece]

Quite frankly I doubt that most people, on average, buy more than 60 songs a year. I probably buy a few more than that and compared to most people I know, I'm a music lover.

I think I would pay $2/month for a subscription service.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that it doesn't work with the iPod, so at least for now it's pretty irrelevant.

It's kind of funny - every time a new one of these subscription services comes out, apple's stock plummets. When will investors... and corporations for that matter, learn that subscription services are a niche kind of thing. I see them as just a way of not having to directly compete with the elegance of ITMS.

BMG has been around for years offering tons of free CDs/year in exchange for an obligation to buy in the future. It's a similar thing.

Question: Why are all these companies desperate to get into the online music store business when Apple only created it as a way to up iPod sales, not as a big profit maker?

 

[DTphonehome]

That would be predatory pricing and REAL would have every right to take them to court. You cannot sell something for a loss just to kill competition. (XBox, PS2 and Gamecube sales always make me wonder on this rule though)

That's why Microsoft got slapped for in the 90's.
That's what airlines often get occused of too.

First off, Real isn't behind Napster. They have the Rahpsody service. But I know what you mean.

True, the pricing could be construed as sneaky, but there are myriad ways out of these types of legal dilemmas. Yahoo! could arge that they aren't trying to kill Napster at all, they are just trying to offer a service which could lead consumers into subscribing to other Yahoo! services. That may not be a perfect argument, but you can come up with dozens of ways that Yahoo! could argue that they aren't directly competing.

 

[shamino]

I hear this argument all the time, and I don't think it is accurate. Sure you can do more with the physical CD, but I don't think you are actually allowed to "do whatever you want". DRM simply forces people to obey Copyright law. Even when you buy a CD, you don't own the music, you are simply licensing it also. But you are correct, there is nothing on the physical CD that forces you to obey the rules.

Anyone who is familiar with copyright law, please post what you are actually ALLOWED to do with a CD

I'm no lawyer, but the way I've read the laws:

- If it is for personal use, then the "fair use" provisions apply. Under these terms, you can basically do whatever you want with the music, as long as you don't redistribute anything. Make all the copies you want, load it onto whatever devices you like, rip samples and mix the sounds together in whatever way you desire. Even run performances (e.g as a DJ) at private events. But make absolutely sure that none of this results in somebody else getting a copy.

- If it is for professional use (public performance, broadcast, advertising, whatever), then you can't do much of anything with that CD without paying for additional licenses. Duplication is (usually) prohibited, even for backup purposes. A wide variety of different kinds of usage licenses may be required for different kinds of public performance - whether it's background music in a store, a DJ performance at a club, a sporting event, a radio/web broadcast, etc.

The rules regarding professional use of music are incredibly complex. Some Googling will reveal more than you'd ever care to know on the subject.

 

[dcgreg]

Apple had better get with it

Listen, I love my iPod. It looks great, sounds great, works great. I'm fine with buying songs at .99, after all, my wife and I have a combined collection of around 300 cd's, so 3,000 songs give or take. But what if you're say between 12-22 years old? Might you have $3,600 in cd's? Sure, you might borrow and rip from friends and family, but the truth is many new to the market won't have a collection of the size of most the posters on this thread. What Yahoo is offering is great. C'mon $5 a month on average for all the songs you want. Given that experience you'll have the opportunity to cherry pick the ones you want for burning or keeping, at .79, not bad. And don't give me that bit about being unable to burn to cd for convenience, that's why you've got the DAP to begin with, spend $6 on an audio out cable.

You can have the same per song or per album experience as on iTMS, plus a music subscription for $5. I would gladly pay Apple a premium (say another $2/mo) to open up a smimilar service.

Here's hoping they do ;-)

 

[shamino]

That would be predatory pricing and REAL would have every right to take them to court. You cannot sell something for a loss just to kill competition. (XBox, PS2 and Gamecube sales always make me wonder on this rule though)

When your product is data and not something physical, it is very hard to pin-down what the actual costs are.

In the case of a music-purchase site (like iTMS), the costs are pretty straightforward. Each song causes Apple to make a payment to the record labels, and there's a per-transaction cost for the credit card usage. All other costs (network bandwidth, server maintenance, etc.) are very fuzzy and can be considered "overhead" inherent in running the service, and probably doesn't have to be reflected in the per-song costs.

In the case of a music-rental site, the costs are compeltely fuzzy. We know the service is paying fees to the record labels, but they're certainly not per-song fees. They are probably per-subscriber fees of some kind, and they're definitely less than the monthly fee subscribers pay. Everything else can be considered "overhead".

Similarly for software products. Although it might have cost Microsoft billions of dollars to develop Windows XP, their per-unit cost is really nothing more than the cost to stamp the CD and package it. The rest is overhead costs that may be made up by unit sales, by selling support contracts, by profits from other parts of the company, or just about anything else. And they may decide to recoup those costs over the course of many years.

If a company wants to eat the overhead costs, they can sell their product at a loss and have it appear otherwise for the purpose of avoiding antitrust legislation.

This is very different from a company selling physical goods (like cars), where the per-unit manufacturing costs (parts and labor) are a large chunk of the purchase price.

 

[shamino]

I think we actually agree. Buying a CD is not really "owning" the music, it's owning the plastic disc and licensing the music on it. But, you own a lot less when you buy from the iTunes Store because there are built-in restrictions that are obviously there to protect copyright, which is understandable, but it also restricts where you can play that music and on how many devices.

And these restrictions are easily, and legally circumvented by burning the tracks to a CD - which is expressly permitted by Apple's DRM terms. Once the CD is burned, your rights with respect to that CD are the same as those from a purchased CD - including the right to rip the tracks into a computer, make duplicates, etc.

For a service that doesn't allow CD burning (which is all of the rental services, if you don't pay extra per-song fees), you have to break the DRM (which means breaking federal law in the US) in order to make that CD. Which means there is no legal way to end up with the (legal) equivalent of a purchased CD.

 

[alandail]

is nobody troubled by the migration issue with Microsoft's DRM that I pointed out earlier?

The license on files you buy can only be migrated to a new computer when you upgrade a limited number of times determined by the service you buy them from, not to exceed 10. You don't just authorize another computer like Apple's DRM does, you have to migrate each and every license.

Not only that, the license can be set to not migrate at all, but rather require a new download from the service, which means the service you buy a protected WMA file from has to both still exist and still have the content years from now for your purchase to still be usable.

And these same migration restrictions are placed on files you rip in from CD.

The result is your music library you spend all of that time building, organizing, buying, etc, using Microsoft's DRM, will someday stop working bit by bit just because you buy new computers from time to time.

 

[paulsecic]

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.

On local TV news they said Yahoo's service would cost $60 a year.

 

[alandail]

to follow up on my last post, this is from Microsoft's DRM page

You've reached the Windows Media Personal License Migration Service Web page because the Player has determined that a new license is required to play the protected file. To play the file on this computer, you must download a new license (a process known as “license migration”) from the Web page by clicking the Migrate License button. The license will act as an electronic key that allows you to unlock the protected file and play it. Keep in mind that a license for a file can only be migrated ten times.

So, if you upgrade your computer every year, in 11 years, your songs will stop playing. If you wait 2 years, in 22 years you'll run into this.

To put this in persepctive, as a software developer, I upgrade my computer about once/year and bought my first mac 21 years ago. Had all of that music had the same DRM that WMA files have, Anything I bought before 1995 would now be unplayable. I have 2137 tracks on my iPod. I would guess 1600 of those were bought prior to 1995. That would be approximately $1600 worth of music that simply stopped working because of upgrading my computer if all music I bought in the past 20 years had Microsoft's DRM system. Some of that music is out of print, so couldn't be replaced when it stopped working, even if I wanted to spend the money again.

 

[VanNess]

This is great! More competition = better for customers! 😀

Actually, to date, there isn't a competitor to Apple. Not a single one. No one offers what Apple offers: The holy trinity of the iTunes Music Store/iTunes Jukebox software/iPod combination; seamlessly integrated and whose ease of use is legendary now.

Apple's "competition" to date has been a laughing stock of disparate companies with disparate profit interests presumably trying to align themselves for a piece of the Apple pie, and, rather predictably, it hasn't worked.

It's almost too late now. The iPod has become so iconized as the portable music player of choice at this point that simply matching specs and price isn't going to cut it anymore. Not to mention its user interface, one of the most important details that gets lost anytime a new player is announced and pitted against the iPod. The press may gloss over it, but the public doesn't. There's much more to it than just being small, white and shinny and the press just doesn't get it. It just sees portable players through the thin lens of hardware feature comparisons. How about Integration with jukebox software and on-line music store? Please....

And, despite that fact that there has never, ever been a single instance of a successful "music rental store" in the entire history of modern music, Yahoo, et al, and the rest of the well known failures in the subscription service business soldier on, apparently believing their technology is more important than the music itself. It's fundamentally flawed from the get-go, and it results in such laughably over-arching statements as this from one of Yahoo's execs, "WE are convinced this is the way YOU should be listening to YOUR music."

The bottom line is people want to own their music of choice. Thats the way its always been, and thats the way it always will be.

After all, we aren't talking about books or movies, which do "lend" very well.

 

[alandail]

as for the yahoo service, those who think they'll buy a cheap MP3 player and try out a subscription are in for a surprise. the subscription service doesn't work with all WMA players, but rather only this small subset

http://www.playsforsure.com/AdvancedSearchResults.aspx?searchtype=Advanced&subscription=true

apparantly playsforsure doesn't quite mean that. it has to be subscription compatible playsforsure devices. The cheapest portable devise is 279.99 for a 5 gig model. No $99 iPod shuffles, that's for sure.

 

[shamino]

And these same migration restrictions are placed on files you rip in from CD.

Windows Media Player only puts DRM on ripped tracks you have it configured to do so.

(On the Windows XP install of WMP 10) Go to Tools->Options, select the "Rip Music" tab and uncheck the "Copy Protect Music" box. End of problem.

As for the problems of DRM, they don't try to hide anything. The program's help page describes the "Copy Protect Music" option as:

Specifies whether tracks copied from CDs in Windows Media Audio format are protected files. A license is required to play protected files. Licenses help protect the copyrights of artists by preventing illegal distribution. Selecting this check box may prevent you from playing the tracks on another computer.

 

[36183]

there are two ways of apple dealing with these subscription services. one they could start a overkill service that could lead napster to going broke. or they could team up with the RIAA and make a case against these services as the limits they enforce are far to easy to walk around. meaning that people can be renting music but end up having no limits over it. it is like when someone rents a dvd and makes a "back-up" on their computer, but this is far easier/faster and requires little contact with physical goods.

 

[ijimk]

no thx yahoo, itunes 4 life in my book (unless i buy the CD)! 😎

 

[36183]

i just noitced that yahoo are advertising this feature

"Share music with friends using Yahoo! Messenger"

now that is something that RIAA will not be happy with. 🙄

Edit: another mistake, they have "Sony" lisited on the "Plays-for-Sure subscription-compatible devices".

i did a search of "sony" on the "play-for-sure" site and no results were returned. yahoo need to get their act together.

 

[alandail]

Windows Media Player only puts DRM on ripped tracks you have it configured to do so.

(On the Windows XP install of WMP 10) Go to Tools->Options, select the "Rip Music" tab and uncheck the "Copy Protect Music" box. End of problem.

As for the problems of DRM, they don't try to hide anything. The program's help page describes the "Copy Protect Music" option as:

well, that's good that this is an option. Of course, they can turn that option off any time they decide to, but until then, it's not as much of a problem as the restrictions they place on the music you buy.

 

[CubaTBird]

subscription service is like a love/hate thing the way i see it... i mean yeah u get all the songs you want... but then the minute u cancel, pop, there goes all ur songs.. at least with itunes u "own" em so to speak... and plus you'd basically have to set up a "lifetime" subscrition with yahoo on their music service... and i don't see yahoo music service on this earth 20 or 30 years from now... well unless its standardized across the board...

 

[0098386]

what a crap idea. digital out recording to a digital device would make a completely new file but with the same quality audio right? arnt there apps which remove DRM too?

how stupid 🙂

 

[36183]

subscription service is like a love/hate thing the way i see it... i mean yeah u get all the songs you want... but then the minute u cancel, pop, there goes all ur songs.. at least with itunes u "own" em so to speak... and plus you'd basically have to set up a "lifetime" subscrition with yahoo on their music service... and i don't see yahoo music service on this earth 20 or 30 years from now... well unless its standardized across the board...

that is what i like about itunes, i only used the music story to "try it out" and i was aware of the price of the songs i bought paid for them and i still listen to them. so far i have only bought 5 songs off iTMS and have been pleased with the service.

with the subscription stuff people will get carried away and start downloading songs like mad, then when they realise that they have to keep on paying yahoo to listen to the songs they will feel really let down and angry, some would just finds ways of removing the DRM form the songs they "rented" (and this is why the RIAA should be shutting down these services) and other will just get really pissed and it will get yahoo some very bad rep.

 

[wide]

at least they're gonna take out Napster by making it much cheaper 🙂

 

[shamino]

i just noitced that yahoo are advertising this feature

"Share music with friends using Yahoo! Messenger"

now that is something that RIAA will not be happy with. 🙄

I wonder what they really mean.

If they're talking about sharing, as in classic-Napster/Kazaa/Gnutells file-sharing, yeah, the RIAA's going to be rather upset.

I could, however, seem them doing something completely different. Where you click "share" from your Yahoo-Music player application and the other person is simply given a link to the Yahoo Music store. If the other end of your chat session is a Yahoo Music subscriber, he can stream/download from that link. Anybody else is told that they need to subscribe.

Technically, this is a form of music-sharing, even though you can only share with other subscribers. And it's probably a good feature for every subscription service to provide.

 

[36183]

does anyone here remember that futurama episode that had that place called "KidNapster"?

after seeing that i have always thought very little of napster for some reason 🙄

 

[36183]

I wonder what they really mean.

If they're talking about sharing, as in classic-Napster/Kazaa/Gnutells file-sharing, yeah, the RIAA's going to be rather upset.

I could, however, seem them doing something completely different. Where you click "share" from your Yahoo-Music player application and the other person is simply given a link to the Yahoo Music store. If the other end of your chat session is a Yahoo Music subscriber, he can stream/download from that link. Anybody else is told that they need to subscribe.

Technically, this is a form of music-sharing, even though you can only share with other subscribers. And it's probably a good feature for every subscription service to provide.

regardless, that will raise certain peoples hopes into thinking that they can send the songs to their mates. on that subject yahoo are really raising a lot of hopes with this service. people will feel lets down once they learn about the limits of the service.

Back onto topic: if yahoo think sending music store links to your mates is a service that is worth advertising they should seriously reconsider some stuff. i have been sending music iTMS links to my mates (over any IM client/IRC/Forums and such) for ages.

 

[fatfish]

Yawn

I had to think hard as to whether this is really worth a post or not.

Yet another subscription service. Yawn.

With each new subscription service not only do iTMS sales keep rising, but suprisingly so does the market share. These services seem to have no impact at all on iTMS, they just share out the non iTMS market even thinner between them.

It just makes more and more sense for Apple not to license their DRM.

The point at which I thought it was worth making a post, came when I thought about the record labels part in all this. They continually crib about Apple dominating the pricing structure, then seem to sell themselves cheap with these subscription services, I have to wonder how they make money from it, or any reasonable amount of money anyway.

Rant coming on............

I really have no interest in subsrciption services, forget what happens when I drop my subscription, that's my choice. My worry would be, what happens when the subscription service goes bust (and many will) or if I want to change my platform (and many are starting to do this) or my PC (not as though I have one or want one) is so old I can't run the new OS (ha ha) and hence I can't run the required updated jukebox needed to still play my music.

Well actually these wouldn't be my worries at all, because I simply want to own my music, even if I was guaranteed the subscription service would go on for ever, I wouldn't be interested. I can do more or less what I want with my music and that's how I like it, I can even leave my music collection to my children when I'm gone.

End of rant.................

So having no interest, I don't know a lot about them, perhaps someone will tell me how it goes with Top 20 stuff, are they still available on subscription. If so, it seems a fairly poor deal for the artist who ordinarily has but a few weeks to sell as many copies of his tune as he can, before they drift into obscurity (often forever).

Maybe someone will answer this for me, since understanding this was the perhaps the only objective I could think of when I decided to post about what to me has really become a very boring subject (another subscription service)

 

[MontyZ]

And these restrictions are easily, and legally circumvented by burning the tracks to a CD - which is expressly permitted by Apple's DRM terms.

Yes, that's true. Now, if only the quality was higher. I don't like the 128 bps clips. Some songs sound "warbly" at that rate. I'd prefer AT LEAST 192 or better.