Slashdot Mirror
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."
Seems like only yesterday that Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.4 billion and said they'd "provide a selection of programming including business events, full-length CDs, and audio books." We all knew Yahoo was going to kill off the conventional media companies like ABC, NBC, and CBS - just a matter of time.
Now Apple and the recording companies under the same pressure. Wow, that's gotta be scary. I sure wouldn't want to be in Steve Jobs' shoes knowing that the same minds behind the Yahoo/Broadcast.com integration are now coming after my customers. I don't know how I'd sleep at night.
What's your damage, Heather?
Oh goody. A subscription service.
Those are always so successful.
Why would they do this you ask? Well... all the cool companies are doing it, right?
I'm waiting for Sun Microsystem's music download service myself.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Yahoo Plans Its Own Music Player, Download Service"
Maybe this is because I'm only halfway through my morning coffee...but...why?
It seems at this point these companies are merely flooding a drowning market that is online music stores. Seems like a new one pops up weekly among the big companies.
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.
Next thing you know there'll be a new thing around called gusic and google will be right behind the new market. Why can't this companies just stick to what they do best?
Bad karma for correcting people I always say.
So, theoretically, the industry could evolve to "Amagoo", which could function both as a company name -and- an appropriate description?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Looks like online music downloads are the new gold rush, the new .com: every major player from past revolutions has missed the boat, and wants some slice of the action.
I'd be lucky if even one of them survives.
(well, except MS, but it's because they don't care if they lose a couple billions a year, and because 95% of desktops come with WMP installed anyway)
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.
Yes, their collection is incomplete, but there's still a huge selection of good stuff.
Not everybody is suited for the streaming approach -- some really prefer to burn CDs for the car, etc -- but for those that are suited for streaming, it's pretty neat.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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
You've got a good point.
Imagine you are sitting there craving some Jazz. You fire up iTunes play some Armstrong, but suddenly you want Ella Fitzgerald. Problem is Ella is only selling her music through Yahoo! because that is the deal Yahoo! made with the record companies. Now you've got to fire up Yahoo!'s player.
After a few songs you realize that it isn't Jazz you were interested in, it was Punk Rock all along. Of course you've got to fire up Real Player because you've purchased it through them. After a few Racid songs you want to listen to some Motörhead... back to iTunes. Wait! After firing up iTunes you realize that it was Yahoo! that sold you the Motörhead tracks.
Or... was it Napster? After waiting for that to load, and then searching you find it. Finally Motörhead is coming through the speakers.
The problem above is caused by a few things. First, you can't buy every type of music in any one store. Some albums, usually soundtracks, don't have all the songs available on your favorite music store. The soundtrack for "A Bronx Tale" is a good example on iTunes. Last I checked, there was only two songs available for purchase because of licensing issues. (Which encouraged me to "steal" the song I wanted instead of buying it) The second problem is that different services offer different prices and have different promotions. What is 99 cents on iTunes may be 88 cents on Rhapsody. It may just make sense to get some songs from iTunes and some from Napster and some from Yahoo! and even some from Wal-Mart. Now, this is usually a good thing, competition and all. But it's making the industry too fragmented.
If we are going to purchase music there needs to be a way to export/import to other DRM schemes. I'm all for online music stores but it seems that being locked into one choice isn't going to work for most people. These companies need to get together and work on one standard - or risk losing everyone to piracy again.
Then again, you can just burn the music to a CD and then rip it to mp3 (or ogg et. al.). But that is what got everyone in this mess in the first place, isn't it?
Get your Unix fortune now!
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).
No, really, you can't - not legally. You are allowed to format shift (for example, you may rip mp3s from the CD so you can listen to this music on your mp3 player). You are not allowed to make unlimited copies and redistribute them. This is precisely what is prohibited by copyright law.
Yahoo plans to beef up its IM service with more-interactive music features that enable people to listen to one another's playlists, according to sources familiar with the initiative.
So how is this different than if I share my songs?
Because Yahoo has made a deal with music publishers who own the rights to these songs to allow them to do what they are doing. You, on the other hand, have made no such deal with music publishers. You are simply violating copyright law by making unauthorized copies of music, the reproduction rights of which you do not own, and giving these unauthorized copies away to friends.
These individual "music download" announcements coming out of the UK (OD2, Virgin, etc) - and the US (MS, Yahoo, Real, everyone else) are part of a larger campaign by Microsoft to smother Apple. Will any one of these services really knock Apple out of the top spot? Noooooo. Is MS looking long-term at control of the underlying technology? HELL YES. I'm sure MS is doing their utmost to make sure these crappy services proliferate and thrive and kill each other off. Only at the end will MS consume the strongest service using it's technology. It's all about control of the standards and not any individual music store. Apple needs to find a way to open their DRM Fairplay scheme up slowly (and with maximum effect) to counter this blitz of crap that's coming to market.
Slashdot plans it's own music download service.
Gentoo plans it's own music download service.
The producers of "That 70's Show" plans it's own music download service.
Rheem - makers of fine water heaters and air conditioners, plans it's own music download service.
My cousin, brother, both sisters, guy down the street, Old Man Jenkins at the haunted amusement park....all are planning their own music download service.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Great... just what i need... another program fighting to have the file type mp3 associated with it.
jeez, just leave poor winamp alone!
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.
why?
Portal. IM. Searching. Now, music. They're just jumping on the bandwagon, albeit 2 years too late. They had a good idea once, and they let that walk away from them. Or, in more official terms, they IPOed.
Hmm, so let's see, who else has just recently IPOed...Ah yes, Google! webmail, browser....Hmm.
Sure I'm a geek -- but I don't tape my glasses anymore, now they're metal.
In any case, I sit working at my computer all day, and I can play whatever I want, whenever I want, from wherever I have high-speed access (including wi-fi).
At home, I keep an old PC wired to my stereo, and remote-desktop it so I can control my stereo via my wi-fi laptop.
Geeky, sure. Apologies for that? No way.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
My cousin, brother, both sisters, guy down the street, Old Man Jenkins at the haunted amusement park....all are planning their own music download service.
I think Old Man Jenkins had the best plan. He would have succeeded, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
"We need to synergize our core competencies so we should leverage our intellectual property to provide best-of-breed services for this on demand e-economy."
"Really Jim? What the hell does that mean?"
"Download services are hothothot. We should start one."
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Remember the days of...
CompuServe
AOL
GEnie
Prodigy
The Source
They all wanted to *own* the home computer connection market. Together they balkanized it so that it never reached critical mass. Only ONE thing changed this, SMTP and the 'Internet bridge.' I used to be on CompuServe, and remember when we could begin routing email out over the Internet bridge. The other (surviving) providers followed suit, and suddenly anyone could email anyone, and home computer connectivity had its first Killer App.
The Web followed that, and though Microsoft has tried mightily, they haven't quite managed to 0wn it, and it looks like that chance might well be gone. (If only because cellphones are now on steroids, viewing the web.)
Then, in spite of a set of open protocols describing IRC, we began seeing Instant Message Balkanization. AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc, etc, and of course none of them talk to each other. (Fortunately, GAIM talks to them all.) The idiots didn't learn!
Now we're hearing about a bunch of deliberately incompatible music download protocols emerging. For that matter, we've had a bunch of deliberately incompatible filesharing protocols, already. STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!
At about this point, I'm sick and tired of people telling me how stupid government is, and how the private sector can always do better. The Internet is the best counter-example. A government project put in place a series of non-owned, open protocols and standards, people came, and for the most part, it just works. Business, in its own-the-whole-pie mindset, denies critical mass to Instant Messaging and online music distribution. If the idiots could cooperate, they could all share a HUGE pie, each would have a bigger chunk of that pie than the whole pies they now have, and customers would be MUCH better off.
That said, I won't argue that government isn't stupid, just that they have no monopoly on stupidity. Sometimes, and the Internet is the poster child for this, government can do things right and business can do things wrong.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
Everybody and his brother is making an MP3 player and music download service. Before long, we'll have 300 of them. After a while, the market will be so over-saturated that most of them will go out of business. Hopefully in the end, we'll have more than just 1 or 2 services left.
Oh wait. I have to keep paying forever? Or else they take my furniture away? Oh.
Now to get back to your point, you do have a good one. The rental model is good for some people under some circumstances. It works for you? Great. But some people prefer the idea of pay once, own it forever. Those tracks you enjoy now, will you want to listen to them twenty years from now? Some of 'em, yeah. Will your rental service still be around twenty years from now? Doubtful. Bye bye tracks.
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.
So does this mean that to play .YHO or whatever files I'll need to add yet ANOTHER player to my machine to only support that one format?
.MOV and Realplayer for .RM & .RA.
I hope it's not true. I already have Quicktime for
All of these media companies need to release the source for their proprietary sub-standard audio codecs.
Gotta love having to pay forever to get something.. and never own anything..
The ultimate dream of big business.. perpetual income.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think the free market can be a useful tool, but I don't worship it. IMHO, the current situation is a 'deep local minima,' meaning that without a big shakeup, it's just not going to get appreciably better. I don't expect these guys to wake up one day and say, "Gee, if we'd just sit down together and hammer out a good common standard, the market growth would be explosive, and everybody would be better off." Early online service providers were in a similar local minima, except that cheap, easy email bridging, and later web bridging pointed the escape path to become Internet service providers.
In our wonderful nation of extremes, seem to want to pigeonhole too many things into the extremes. So you contrast slugging it out in the market with out-of-touch committees coming up with X.500 and the OSI 7-layer taco. The Internet is somewhere in the middle, with drafts evolving based on practical experience, by people who have learned that sometimes working together... works.
Slightly different note... Sometimes 'good enough' is the enemy of better or best. But I think what is really happening with the market competition of Instant Messaging and music downloads has nothing at all to do with quality, and everything to do with lockin.
That's the other side of the gripe about American business. It seems to me that they're afraid to compete, so they want to FORCE people to be customers.
At the end of the day, I AM THE CUSTOMER. I don't like how they're doing business, I think it's short-sighted. Furthermore, if SOMEBODY will do business in what I consider to be an enlightened fashion, at a resonable (not necessarily the lowest) price, I'll take my business there. So far the market is disappointing me.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's strange how large companies can act like small lemmings. Is that a cliff or a large pile of money? Well Steve Job is running towards we'd better run towards it too.