Print - Yahoo! Launches Music Subscription Service

Yahoo! this week announced the immediate availability of its new online music subscription service, Yahoo! Music Unlimited. The entrance of the online services giant into the music subscription service market was widely expected, but the low initial price of that service--just one-third the cost of similar services from rivals--surprised analysts and onlookers. It also sent shock waves that were felt by rivals Apple, Napster, and RealNetworks.

"We are committed to being at the forefront of the rapidly growing online music segment," said Lloyd Braun, who heads the Yahoo! Media Group. "Yahoo! Music Unlimited draws on the best of Yahoo! to provide personalization and community features unlike anything else in the marketplace."

Yahoo! Music Unlimited is currently available in beta form, and the front-end application is clean if a bit buggy. The service, like that of competitors, allows subscribers to access over 1 million songs, which can be downloaded and played back on PCs and Windows Media Player 10-compatible portable devices. Songs downloaded from Yahoo! Music Unlimited are among the highest quality on the market: The company offers songs in 192 Kbps Windows Media Audio (WMA) format.

What really sets Yahoo! Music Unlimited apart from the competition, however, is the cost. Subscribers will pay just $6.99 a month, or $60 for an entire year, which works out to be about $5.00 a month. Similar services from Napster and RealNetworks--Napster To Go and Rhapsody, respectively--cost three times that amount. However, it's likely that Yahoo's pricing is introductory and that the company will raise prices over time.

Until that happens, Yahoo! is clearly making waves. Stock in both Napster and RealNetworks plummeted yesterday after the Yahoo! service was announced, and stock in Apple Computer--which offers the break-even iTunes Music Store sans a subscription services--fell 2.2 percent as well.

Yahoo! Music Unlimited appears to build on technology from MusicMatch, which Yahoo! purchased last year. Currently, Yahoo!'s new service and a similar MusicMatch service (MusicMatch On Demand) will be offered separately, but the two services will likely be combined over time. Yahoo! lowered prices at MusicMatch On Demand to match (ahem) the prices at Yahoo! Music Unlimited.

Although there is a first free week for trial , it does not work at all ! Only 30 seconds of a song ! What a lousy copy of Musicmatch Jukebox !

I like the service. I use rhapsody though and I am testing this out. I like the price for yahoo unlimitted. I wish i could subscribe and pay 5.00 a month for it, but 6.99 isnt bad either. Like I said I use rhapsody and I love rhapody though. I hate the new version of rhapsody in a way, but have both installed. I say get yahoo unlimitted its great man.

Remember, if you don't use MacOS, you suck and are a real a$$hole stup1d muthafukka and deserve to die a horrible death. Mac users are the Fourth Reichh! You Windows users are inferior beings.

Remember, if you don't use MacOS, you suck and are a real a$$hole stup1d muthafukka and deserve to die a horrible death

Hey, if anyone at Windows ITPro are listening: TURN OFF YOUR ******* ANONYMOUS POSTINGS! If anyone wants to post stupid dribble like the above, they should at least be forced to register so we can all kick the crap out of him!

Remember, if you don't use MacOS, you suck and are a real a$$hole stup1d muthafukka and deserve to die a horrible death. Mac users are the Fourth Reichh! You Windows users are inferior beings.

"Hey, if anyone at Windows ITPro are listening: TURN OFF YOUR ******* ANONYMOUS POSTINGS! If anyone wants to post stupid dribble like the above, they should at least be forced to register so we can all kick the crap out of him!" Shut up, moron. Mac is the wave of the future. Go to MacUser. Learn that you suck unless you use OSX.

Why did OS X copy the name from Windows XP? What is with the X? -------- LMFAO!!!!! Roman Numeral 10 dork, it's the 10th OS. Furthermore.. you just quoted every Mac zealot in 2001 who heard about XP. OS X was out and then XP came out. ****** IT pro my ***.. You should really despise OS X, because if you are an it pro it's liable to put you out of work.

Go to MacUser. Learn that you suck unless you use OSX. --- wow.. you guys are being sarastic now? you want the mac users to lay off? Don't worry, we only have a 2% marketshare.. ;)

A few thoughts. The yahoo site only says you need Windows MP 9 and not 10. Anyhow. I'll be dumping napster. I will buy a year of this, for the 4.99 a month rate. Word to you Ifools, make sure the next player you buy Plays For Sure. If you don't recognize that Microsoft is going to be the player, just look at some of the industry news, phillips will ship all of their chips with the WM codecs and drm. That was just announced today. Microsoft wasn't playing when it kicked your artsy ***** in the 90's and it's sure not going to let you gay artsy photoshop users take over today. Plays for sure. Just remember that, when you switch back to windows again. (we know it's not the first time you did)

renting music sucks, stealing it is better. And MAC users all need to crawl in a hole and congratulate each other on sucking so badly

Seriously...the whole "Anonymous posting" thing has to go. Of course, I'll never become a registered user as long as y'all require my name and address. That's just silly.

"wow.. you guys are being sarastic now? you want the mac users to lay off? Don't worry, we only have a 2% marketshare.. " STFU - I wrote that users suck unless they use OS X. And I was serious. Fukkin trash. These illiterite azzhole Windoze usersneed to know that they suck, and their OS sucks.

"These illiterite azzhole Windoze usersneed to know that they suck, and their OS sucks." OMG - you are too funny. Smarty Mac troll can't even spell "illiterite"! HAHAHAHA! Go crawl back in your cave, you sad little troll. Maybe learn some English while you are at it. With your attitude, why would anyone ever listen to anything you Mac trolls have to say on this site! You are spinning your wheels at this point. Why not just give up?

"Seriously...the whole "Anonymous posting" thing has to go." why is that? because you stupid windows users can't handle the superiority of Apple and MacOS? wake up. microsoft will fall, and Windoze users along with them. and the Mac faithful will laugh when you are jobless, homeless, and hungry.

Being a woman I can say all the Mac OS X lovers I have known have small penises.

"You should really despise OS X, because if you are an it pro it's liable to put you out of work. " Your right, because I would have no clients.

" Don't worry, we only have a 2% marketshare.. ;)" 3.7% according to Gartner compared to 2.6% this time last year. Up 0.5% this last quarter.

"Being a woman I can say all the Mac OS X lovers I have known have small penises." They must be pretty weird Mac 'lovers' if they had to pork the trailer trash.

wow their are more mac posts than windows posts in a PC site. Sad... I guess that's what the mac user's use their macs for. Bragging about their 2000 dollar computer that they only use for flaming windows.

Wow, I have never seen so many MAC users flood every blog on a windows site. They are not just joking around. They are going CRAZY by telling people to use a MAC. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH Look what the previous person said: "Remember, if you don't use MacOS, you suck and are a real a$$hole stup1d muthafukka and deserve to die a horrible death " They are trying to force people into MACs. Wow they look ****** off. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH Well guess what? Nobody wants to use a MAC. And nobody is forcing you to use windows. This is some funny stuff. Keep em coming MAC fanatics. hahahaahahahahahaahahaahahahaahahaha

"You should really despise OS X, because if you are an it pro it's liable to put you out of work. " Your right, because I would have no clients. ------ No ****. You would be unemployed were it not for the "rock solid stability" of most Windows systems, not to mention the convenient 'holes' that keep guys like Symantec in business.

"Yahoo! Music Unlimited is available to U.S.-based subscribers only." Only Napster isn't that limited

You go girl. I noticed the same thing about those Mac guys. They come up short where it counts. I think their Macs are their penis.

It's absolutely amazing that there are people here who think the guy who writes "the Remember, if you don't use MacOS, you suck ..." is actually a mac user. Bet hey those people also think Paul is a journalist, I even saw someone here in the comments who actually thinks the X in osX was copied from XP while everyone knows it's the other way around. I guess Paul gets the audience he deserves, this website is as far as their career in CS or IT will ever go.

"Being a woman I can say all the Mac OS X lovers I have known have small penises." They must be pretty weird Mac 'lovers' if they had to pork the trailer trash. I said they were lovers of OS X not my lovers. I see I should have also said they were stupid as you just proved.

Very funny stuff woman. That Mac guy in his reply to your post did prove his stupiditiy.I get the feeling he needs to compensate for something proving your point.

Hi Paul, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Musicmatch Platinum user (downloads, radio, on demand, laundry, etc.). It's grown a bit buggy as they've rapidly expanded its functionality, but I'm still there. I'm really curious as to where the program's going as a result of its merger with Yahoo, and I'd love to see you keep an eye on it in your writing. - Sean