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Yahoo Plans Its Own Music Player, Download Service
iPod writes "Since late last year, Yahoo has been developing its own music player software, which will be underpinned by a subscription and download service provided by MusicNet, sources familiar with the plan said. Yahoo is developing its own music player software, backed by MusicNet-provided downloads and subscriptions, that it plans to run alongside the recently purchased Musicmatch."
So how is this different than if I share my songs?
The Musicmatch acquisition brought Yahoo the third-largest audience for online music, according to Internet research firm ComScore Media Metrix. As of August, Yahoo's Launch ranked top with 14 million unique users, followed by AOL Music at 13 million and Musicmatch at 5.8 million. MSN Music came in fourth with 4.3 million, Napster owner Roxio had 2.1 million unique users, and RealNetworks' Listen accounted for 1.8 million.
I don't own any drm music. If I want mp3's, I rip them from my own CD's and trade with friends (since we paid for the CD, we can make copies and give them out for free to anyone we want, regardless of what the RIAA says). Those pay services all have their own DRM (I am guessing from what I have been reading), so it is like owning a cripled peice of software. I don't get why people buy something that will only work on X's player.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
..that like LAUNCHCast they'll make this ASP dependent as well, so that us Linux folk will be essentially locked out. Not that I care.
the drive toward better, more sensible distribution of digital content is finally catching on in the commercial world. in fact, they've even taken it a step further by coupling simple downloads with a system to seek out new music for you based on your musical preferences, much like a dating service.
i'm continually astonished by the resiliency of the dating service concept. it works for slashdot, it works for yahoo. as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, i think we can expect to see much more like this in the future. perhaps they'll even cross-reference between services, so that, for example, one's tastes in music could be correlated with one's taste in books, movies, or dining establishments.
what a time to be alive.
A Proud Member of the Reality Oriented Community.
Exactly. Quoting my previous comment:
Must everybody in the world have thier own broswer these days? We are already plagued by interoperability in browsers, Operating Systems, Instant messengers, etc... I know it's always good to have a choice, but not when it's this complicated. I support multiple choices, but I'd like them all to at least work, as well as work together. It seems like these days everybody wants to be a search engine, everybody wants to offer a music download service. Now is everyone going to offer thier own browers?
--
Retail Retreat
Does this favor those that give "value add" - like Apple, who develops products along the entire vertical chain (below music creation point, anyway) and can distinguish themselves in the market any where along the chain *OR* will the monopoly presence of MS and the use of the WMA format by the commodity providers make that uniqueness/differentiation hard to maintain/defend?
And we already know that Apple produces better software
I for one am a total convert to the streaming jukebox approach to music. I don't even know how to write about it without coming across like spam -- having instant access to over 40,000 albums for about $25 every three months utterly changed the way I listen to music. (I use Rhapsody, but it looks like the MusicMatch service is roughly identical) Even CDs I own don't get played anymore because it's faster to stream them, and when I want to try a new artist I don't futz around accidentally downloading their most popular track five times -- I just click and their first CD is playing.
...
So, there are still problems. You're dependent on your network connection, and on their servers. You only have the songs they've managed to acquire, which for example means almost no Beatles. Rhapsody only runs in Windows -- and how much of your time do you really spend within listening distance of a Windows box connected to broadband?
Well, tragically, about 90% of it. And don't lie, if you're reading this you probably do too.
I don't think the jukebox concept is necessarily all there yet for people whose job isn't computers -- but as soon as it reaches the same price via cell phones, the idea of buying CDs is going to be antique. If you haven't tried these things, give them a shot -- for me, at least, this way kicks the ass of both CDs and P2P hands down.
Oh, and, uh, some spam for you. If you sign up for the FREE TRIAL VERSION for whatever service pleases you, please tell them I sent you. They only clean out my cage and restock the food pellets if I bring in enough referrals every week
Remember when Yahoo was a search engine? And one day they started using other search engines under contract because Yahoo couldn't keep up any more? Yahoo does a good job rebranding other people's work (news.yahoo.com...) and presenting it in an integrated location. iTunes Music Store will continue to fluorish. They're popular right now and they know it. If iTMS wanes in the slightest, I bet they start licensing all over. They already have a referral program.
Now I'm just confused, I can see it with most companies, but what's that then when it comes to Microsoft?
Summation 2
In all probability there will be an explosion of music download services, followed by consolidation into one or two dominant players. I don't think price differentiation will play a big role in the long term. What will probably make the most difference -- and allow multiple services to exist -- is labels exclusively licensing their tracks to one service or another. Seen another way, this means the most likely service providers in the long run are the (major) labels themselves, because the cost of running a music download site is low (primarily a marketing cost). Indies will probably prefer to continue to license their tracks to third-party stores, although I'd like to see them set up co-operatives.
We might see aggregators, sites that allow you to transparently purchase from multiple stores. However, this doesn't seem to be very prevalent in other "obvious" areas, e.g. search engines that submit your query to google, jeeves etc and then present a single result? They may exist, but they're not popular.
"No, really, you can't - not legally."
Just because they pass stupid laws doesn't mean you have to follow them.
If my wife wants a copy of a CD to listen to in her car, I don't say "Honey, so sorry, that would violate federal copyright regulation and put a record company exec out of work".
Think about what you're saying...they sold me the CD. I'm not going to put it on the internet, but I have no moral problem making a copy for a friend, and I certainly am not worried about any legal ramification.
Seems like you're way too hung up with a weird sense of righteousness. The way my kids correct me when I pronounce a word wrong. Its silly, and you need laught at yourself more.
Well first, being "tethered to your computer" isn't so bad since anyone capable of setting up a stereo system is also capable of hooking their computer up to it and thus listening anywhere in their home. I noticed a music player on my sister's computer the other day and she can barely use the thing (I have to setup her email whenever she moves). It's probably a lot like an advanced stereo itself to her. Despite the recent popularity of hard drive based MP3 players the vast majority of people still don't have them and keep all their music at home, only taking some of it with them on the go (which you can also do for select songs via Real's service if you buy the song for burning).
;p ^^
Second, one of the things Real advertises is that you can use your account from any networked computer be it home, at work (lol, well I suppose some bosses might let you), or say a wireless laptop on a college campus. I also saw something about Rhapsody over mobile phones w/ headphones. If that performs well then the Rhapsody person not only has access to more music than someone with an MP3 player, he only needs his phone to do it and not a separate player.
I imagine there are still things to work out like battery life of a cell phone playing music for hours, but it's certainly not as limited as you say. The Real guy we had for an interview mentioned some good numbers for Rhapsody subscribers so it is getting people. Personally, though, I just use a flash player with some of my own CDs ripped and think you 'battery sucking, hard drive hauling, need access to a billion songs either by buying/stealing/subscribing people' are insane.
I know what they did with launch.com. They killed realplayer support first while I was using windows and Opera and gave only choice: "windows media player" which especially I HATE the sound quality.
Now they do lame tricks on their video services to make everyone use Internet Explorer while every browser now (including safari) supports liveconnect extensions.
So, Yahoo as I admire you are FBSD based, you have been asshole to alternative OS/Player users.
No wonder the "thing" they will offer will be DRM'ed WMA, not interested.
When it was clear that Yahoo searches were not the thing, Yahoo! reinvented itself as a portal, something that was just becoming the big thing to do. As a portal, a one stop shop, it does a pretty good job. Also as a portal it has to have lots of stuff, some of which it might be valuable to own.
So, it Yahoo! is a one stop shop, it has to sell music. It may not make much money on it, but at least customers will not have to go elsewhere.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black