Yahoo! Buys Musicmatch

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:43AM from the do-you-ehar-what-i-hear dept.

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."

21 of 194 comments (clear)

Second rate! by mekkab · 2004-09-14 06:46 · Score: 5, Funny

Great! A second-rate search engine buys a second rate MP3 player! News at 11!

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1. Re:Second rate! by vijaya_chandra · 2004-09-14 07:00 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You might be trying to be funny.
  But Yahoo! doesn't definitely mean just the search engine.
  They do have other good services like mail and messenger. While gmail might have stolen have a big chunk of their email base, their messenger is definitely not sub-par (not that it'd matter much for users of gaim)
  
  Add things like launch, games, news, groups, geocities, mobile .... and you have a pretty impressive list
2. Re:Second rate! by mrklin · 2004-09-14 07:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
3. Re:Second rate! by michael+path · 2004-09-14 07:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
4. Re:Second rate! by rainman_bc · 2004-09-14 07:17 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Personally, Yahoo lost me forever with their search engine with the X10 popups. Switched to google around that time, as I suspect many others did the same.
  
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5. Re:Second rate! by frankthechicken · 2004-09-14 09:17 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Have you tried Foobar 2000(I would recommend the Special Install)?
  
  It has excellent tagging capabilities, and more than a few useful plug-ins.
  
  Their forum's quite useful as well.
6. Re:Second rate! by g-doo · 2004-09-14 09:31 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  How about...a first-rate portal since its founding? It seems that quite a few people scoff at anything that's not Google/Apple/Linux/etc. without much basis. While Yahoo! Search may have lost its number one position a few years ago, it has certainly reworked its search engine to the point where it's comparable to Google's. It's just that many Slashdotters have tried no search engine recently other than Google, so they wouldn't know.
Internet Conglomerations? by aldeng · 2004-09-14 06:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

Is it just me, or are all of the internet portals (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) building their own little digital life empires? How long till Google follows suit, or will the even?
1. Re:Internet Conglomerations? by AKAImBatman · 2004-09-14 06:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Is it just me, or are all of the internet portals (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) building their own little digital life empires?
  
  I'm surprised it took you this long to notice. The only way you become a mega-corporation is by diversifying across your product lines. The search engines have been in a unique position to do this in the technology world.
  
  How long till Google follows suit, or will the even?
  
  You mean they're not? Between the search engine, Froogle, Google Blogs, GMail, Google Groups, Google News, and other features, I'd have thought they'd be on the top of the list for "digital empires".
  
  --
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Narrows? by LittleVito · 2004-09-14 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Major Narrowing? by TheGax · 2004-09-14 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
shocking by -kertrats- · 2004-09-14 06:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

yet another pointless add-on to clutter up yahoo more...they're reminding me of that new game katamari damacy...

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why is this in any way important by aardwolf204 · 2004-09-14 06:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:why is this in any way important by Chess_the_cat · 2004-09-14 06:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This means little to most slashdotters. We dont use Yahoo, we all switched to google ages ago.
  Why do people still consider Yahoo! a search engine when it's clearly a web portal and a popular one at that. Can you play Fantasy Football at Google.com? Can you play chess online? Can you watch trailers, listen to music, shop, check your calendar...etc. etc. Google is a great search engine but that's all it is. Yahoo! is a web portal that features a search engine. They're not even in the same game as Google.
  
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Fine, as long as they dontt "Yahoo!" it! by jbarr · 2004-09-14 06:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

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!
Narrowing? by LowneWulf · 2004-09-14 06:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Does Yahoo own other online music shops already? Otherwise, how is this narrowing the market?
Slashdot summary wrong yet again... by LostCluster · 2004-09-14 06:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Funny by StevenHenderson · 2004-09-14 06:53 · Score: 5, Funny

Funny how now you can use a company's search engine to crack a piece of its software!
blah by Tirinal · 2004-09-14 06:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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~Tirinal
not in the paid email anymore by ChipMonk · 2004-09-14 07:06 · Score: 4, Informative

I have a paid Yahoo email account. I haven't seen a big obnoxious ad in my email interface since they re-vamped and upped their quotas earlier this year.
Yahoo still trumps Google by brunes69 · 2004-09-14 09:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

While I like Google better as a company, and I like their search, email, and news site sbetter, I sure do wish they had some of the portal features Yahoo has. I mean, with Yahoo! Calender, Yahoo! Addressbook, Yahoo! greetings, Yahoo! Messanger, and Yahoo! Mail, and the seamless integration between them all, Yahoo is basically an online groupware suite.

I also wish Google news was customizeable like my.yahoo.com - while Google news is more timely and more relevant, many of the topics have no interest to me, and I'd like to be able to insert stock tickers and whatnot. My Yahoo! even lets you plug your own RSS feeds in now.