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Yahoo! Buys Musicmatch
coyotegestalt writes "According to PC World, Yahoo! has just finalized a deal to buy Musicmatch (both its On Demand and download services) for $160 million. More details at IBD. This is a major narrowing of the online music market."
As far as I can tell, Yahoo has an on-line radio service, but not a music services system like MusicMatch. It's not so much narrowing the field as Yahoo was never really in the field to begin with. It's more like moving a player around.
How exactly does this represent a major narrowing of the online music industry?
Yahoo didn't have any sort of pay music service that I can think of. Their "Launch" thing is basically just a radio station kind of deal. And MusicMatch doesn't say "online music" to me. They're a late comer in the game. Yahoo probably figures they can enter the game buy snapping up the newest (cheapest) player.
Why is this in any way important?
This means little to most slashdotters. We dont use Yahoo, we all switched to google ages ago. We dont use Musicmatch Jukebox, thats what cdex, winamp, xmms, mplayer, etc is for. Didnt we just go through this a few hours ago with Real's player. We bitch, moan, but we dont even use the services / software anyway. This headline is just about exciting as popular desktop wallpaper site merges with popular desktop icon site.
I'm wearing slashdot green today.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Well, I PAID for the "lifetime" update subscription for MusicMatch a couple years ago, and have been very happy withe the app. Unfortunatly, Yahoo! is notorious for filling its pages (mail, groups, etc.) with huge, obnoxious ads--even on paid eamil accounts. So if Yahoo! junks up MusicMatch with its typical ads like their other online services, I'll dump it in a heartbeat.
MusicMatch has been a lean, mean app that has worked on systems that WinAmp couldn't. If Yahoo mucks this one up, I'll be really pissed.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Does Yahoo own other online music shops already? Otherwise, how is this narrowing the market?
The question now is, what will the effect be on online music consumers? Greater competition is always advantageous for buyers, driving the price down. If the major internet portals are building their own empires - monopolies? Is such a thing possible online? - it seems that the consumers will once again get screwed as our choices decrease and prices increase.
Snazzier than a Three-Piece Suit: http://kf.rainydaycommunications.net/
This is a major narrowing of the online music market.
Excuse me? I don't see any "Yahoo! Music Download" service folding up. "Launch Music on Yahoo" is a music news site, now likely to see its brand image tied closer to the MusicMatch music delivery service.
Yahoo!'s favorite music delivery service at this point according to the launch.yahoo.com page appears to be going out and buying the CD the old fashioned way at Target.
Has anyone noticed how impossible this stuff is to remove from a new Dell computer? Hopefully Yahoo! does something about this bloated piece of ubiquitous spyware.
This is a major narrowing of the online music market.
Not really. For all practical intents and purposes, Apple has the online music market under its thumb. Barring some very unYahoo-like innovation, the consequences of this sale will likely be nothing more than surface ripples.
~Tirinal
How is Yahoo's search engine sceond rate?
A little bit late to the game but the Yahoo! Search interface at http://search.yahoo.com/ is almost as clean as Google's.
Yahoo's search results, supplied by algorithms combined from the once-superior Yahoo, Altavista, and Inktomi, is in my opinion (and many search engine watchers too) just as good as Google's too.
As for their music acqusition, personaly I use iTunes. I look forward to see what Google does next. Picasa/Hello are pretty good acquisitions.
I would be interested to see the numbers, but it would seem that even ten million songs, at a profit of maybe ten cents apiece (though it's probably closer to five), yields a profit of only a million dollars--small, small potatoes for a company like Yahoo! or Apple.
But it's the "hot thing" right now that is attracting investors. You've gotta have an online music store! But the people profiting are (1)the publishers (read: RIAA) who don't have to do anything but rake in the royalties while others pay for the distribution and (2)the companies manufacturing players for this stuff.
Yahoo! is jumping on a bandwagon. Maybe because people are starting to view them as last year's tech company? Who knows. All I know is, iTunes has got to be making a lot more money (for Apple) selling iPods than selling songs.
Free computers!
It's gotten to the point where I've forgotten Yahoo! had a search engine.
I wouldn't agree about Musicmatch though, their player isn't bad - and I've used it for encoding and playback of much of my collection. My only complaint is that launching is a touch too resource intensive - almost as bad as WMP.
How is this a "major narrowing of the online music market" when all the same players still exist, new stores open left and right, and one simply has a new owner?
what the hell are you doing with .ogg?...not trying to be rude...just ignorant, i guess.
./xmms
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Yahoo isn't just a portal/search engine company. their intent is to become an internet media distribution company (Launch and its recent integration with Messenger comes to mind). Semel's background and talent was in Media Distribution, so buying up musicmatch and adding music distribution to their stable of products is an obvious move.
Musicmatch may not be a big player on the lines of iTunes, but they certainly have an established brand name that Yahoo could take advantage of. and their jukebox player is quite popular, so if they can figure out how to lure more users into the integrated store, that's only a click away in the jukebox player, it could be a success.