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."

8 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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In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
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.
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?
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.
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