Yahoo! Premieres Yahoo! Music Unlimited

By | May 10th, 2005 comments icon (7) Comments


yahoo music logoYahoo! Inc. today announced the beta availability of its new music subscription service, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, providing music fans with unparalleled music listening and management functionality at incomparable value with an introductory price of just $4.99 per month for an annual subscription or $6.99 on a monthly basis. The service, available May 11, allows consumers to play tunes from a catalog of more than one million songs, transfer tracks to portable devices, as well as enjoy the unique ability to share and discover music with friends through Yahoo! Messenger.

“We are committed to being at the forefront of the rapidly growing online music segment,” said Lloyd Braun, head of 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.”

In addition to allowing fans to browse and listen to friends’ collections of subscription music and playlists via Yahoo! Messenger, the service enables them to build personalized music libraries, transfer tracks to compatible portable devices, purchase discounted permanent downloads, listen to commercial-free Internet radio stations and access their subscription service from any Internet-connected computer.

“From premium radio to an entirely on-demand experience, Yahoo! Music Unlimited has assembled all the key elements to fulfill consumers’ needs,” said Dave Goldberg, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Music. “For a great value, users get to listen to as much music as they want, while utilizing superior innovations in playlist generation and community features to enrich and expand their music experience.”

Subscription Service with Unparalleled Price, Sharing and Personalization

Yahoo! Music Unlimited features include:

  • Yahoo Music Engine: Yahoo! Music Unlimited comes with a free music management application, the Yahoo! Music Engine, which lets consumers rip, mix and burn CDs, import and manage music, and transfer music to portable devices.
  • Large Music Library: Yahoo! Music Unlimited offers a continuously growing online catalog of music composed of more than one million songs, encoded in the highest audio quality (192 kbs) from all major record labels as well as most independent labels.
  • Yahoo! Messenger Integration: Extending the long tradition of Yahoo! Music’s community-based music experience, Yahoo! Music Unlimited makes it easy for consumers to share and discover music among an online community of friends. Integrated with Yahoo! Messenger, the service provides the unique ability for subscribers to browse and listen to friends’ subscription music collections and playlists.
  • Personalization & Community: Leveraging the more than three billion song, artist and album ratings of Yahoo! Music fans, Yahoo! Music Unlimited will generate personalized homepages and recommendations based on perceived tastes and subscriber community ratings. As users rate more songs and add to their digital collection by importing music from CDs, downloads, etc., subscribers discover new music through recommendations made by other Yahoo! members who have similar music tastes.
  • Music Portability: Yahoo! Music Unlimited uses the WMA format and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 (WM DRM 10). This support enables subscription tracks to be transferred to any portable device that supports WM DRM 10.
  • Instant Playlists: Members seeking music similar to a particular artist or genre can generate instant playlists of dozens of comparable tracks and store them in their personal music library. Instant playlists are a convenient way to discover new music; organize tracks for special occasions such as roadtrips, workouts or dinners-for-two; as well as transfer multiple files to portable devices.
  • LAUNCHcast Integration: Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscribers automatically receive a premium version of LAUNCHcast, the leading Internet radio service. This version of LAUNCHcast offers more than 150 pre-programmed stations, no commercial interruptions, unlimited song skipping, premium audio quality and exclusive genre and artist stations.
  • Access From Any PC: Using their Yahoo! ID, members can access their personalized subscription content from any Internet-connected computer.
  • Download Purchases: The Yahoo! Music Engine provides access to a music download store, allowing users to purchase and permanently own songs for $0.99 per track. Subscribers to Yahoo! Music Unlimited are offered downloads at a discounted rate of $0.79 per song. Downloads purchased through Yahoo! Music Unlimited can be burned onto CDs, transferred to compatible portable devices, and used on a total of five Pcs.

Yahoo! Music will continue to offer Musicmatch’s Jukebox 10 music management and On Demand subscription services. Effective today, Musicmatch On Demand pricing will be lowered to $6.99 monthly, $5.99 quarterly and $4.99 annually for subscribers. Yahoo! Music intends to eventually combine Musicmatch’s offerings with Yahoo! Music Unlimited to create the industry’s best end-to-end suite of music services.

Pricing and Availability

Yahoo! Music Unlimited can be accessed by downloading the free Yahoo! Music Engine music management software from http://music.yahoo.com. Yahoo! Music Unlimited is available for an introductory annual fee of $59.88 or monthly subscription of $6.99. To get started Yahoo! is also offering a 7-day free trial to consumers. At present, the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service is only available to users within the United States.

About Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Music (http://music.yahoo.com) offers user the most comprehensive music-related content, features and information available online. Yahoo! Music provides a wide selection of streaming audio, the Web’s largest collection of music videos, Internet radio, exclusive artist features and music news covering all genres of music to Yahoo! visitors. Yahoo! is also home to Musicmatch, which offers music software and services to help users manage, enjoy and buy music that best matches their unique tastes.





Filed in: Content Providers

  • http://www.rohoguys.com rohodoug

    Is there anyway to access Yahoo Music in MCE?

  • http://www.alexandergrundner.com Alexander Grundner

    It’s not listed in the press release, but I’m guessing, if the service becomes popular, that some hack will create an MCE plug-in to tap into the service. The other possibity is that Yahoo will create an online spotlight feature — similar to Napster’s — that will give you access to your music and the ability to purchase tracks.

  • theharmonyguy

    I must say, this announcement took me by surprise. It certainly changes the landscape a bit. I especially like how much you get with one package . . . this could pull me off Real (not that I’m deeply in love with them to start with). The one thing I do like about Real is the fact you can convert files to other formats (and that the player plays just about anything, including Napster and iTunes purchases), but with support for WMA where it is now that may not be so big an issue any more. Hmm . . .

  • http://www.alexandergrundner.com Alexander Grundner

    Makezine has some screenshots and details on some cool Yahoo! Music plug-ins:

    Yahoo! Music Engine review: Here’s a look through my DIY goggles of the new Yahoo! Music Engine. It’s not really a review, I didn’t buy a song (and may never) but was interested in using it as a music manager on my PC since I get asked about which ones work the “least worst”. It’s pretty good- supports OGG and FLAC and plays nice with all the wacky devices I have for the most part. The thing I was most interested in was the Plug ins. I downloaded the Podcasting / Slurp one, the Line In recorder, Unix style shell and Alarm Clock- there are many more and anyone can develop additional ones. Here are some screenshots.

  • melvin

    The growing popularity of these online subscription music services like Yahoo is starting to make me nervous.

    For one thing, the idea of paying a rental fee for the rest of my life really bothers me. I plan on living another 40 years atleast, which is $4800 at a $10 a month rate (I doubt Yahoo’s rate will last long). If you ever cancel your subscription, you got nothing. I don’t know whether I’d buy more music then this before I die, but at lest I’d own it.

    But there is another side to this. I’ve heard recently that the RIAA actually perfers the subscription model to the ‘buy per song’ model. Why? I can think of two reasons.

    1) Consumers on average spend less on purchases then the subscription fee is. Therefore more profit. Thats the current benefit

    2) In the distant future when the majority of the consumers are subscribers, profit is far removed from production. If you stop or slow production, will your customers stop their subscriptions? Remember, subscribers leave with nothing in their pockets, so would think twice about giving up all that they already have access to. Hell, cutting production cuts costs and would actually increase profitablity. Is there any reason to think that record companies wouldn’t do this, given their history.

    I know it’s not that simple since there will always be competing services, independent musicians, ‘long tail media, future formats, and others that complicate things, but I can definitely see the consumer losing out with the subscription model.

  • http://www.alexandergrundner.com Alexander Grundner

    Hey, Melvin

    I get where you’re coming from, but the way people should look at rental subscription models should be like signing up for satellite radio, which costs $12.95/mo. (Yahoo’s service is only $6.99 a month). If you don’t want to go the online route, just buy CDs at the local store and convert them to MP3s. Many people prefer doing it this way… I’m one of those (I tend to by DJ mix CDs that don’t translate well in a buy per track model). But it sounds tempting to me to spend $6.99 a month for a service that lets me download as much music as my portable can take and enjoy it for 30 days. If the unlimited audio content per month model works for satellite radio, why not digital music? In fact, I can’t wait until an unlimited download movie service starts up that will (hopefully) be price competitively with Netflix and Blockbuster Online.

  • theharmonyguy

    melvin makes some good points, though. A low monthly fee may be tempting, but part of the attraction is that there’s not a convenient, low-priced alternative when it comes to buying tracks.

    Besides, satellite radio is not like digital music. When I tune into radio or TV, I’m at the mercy of the broadcasters and get their choice of content. I choose my station based on my general preferences. But with my own personal music library, I want to be able to pull up a particular track. And like melvin, I don’t want to have to worry about losing that track if I don’t re-up ever so often.

    I’ve ranted before against subscription and rental stuff before, though. :)