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."

Comments

Subscription..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh goody. A subscription service.
Those are always so successful.

Should be good...

[here4fun]

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?

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.

Re:Wow, just like they manhandled the TV networks!

[here4fun]

Seems like only yesterday that Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.4 billion

I wonder what broadcast.com is worth today. But I am happy that Mark Cuban got the money to but the Dallas Mav's, he is probably the most entertaining owner in the NBA.

We all knew Yahoo was going to kill off the conventional media companies like ABC, NBC, and CBS - just a matter of time.

Just like MSN was going to kill CNN and Fox News.

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 bet if Mark Cuban was still involved, they would have the best service on the web. That is because the #1 thing that guides Cuban's buisness decisions is he wants the customer to be happy. Everything he touches turns to gold. He should be a case study in buisness schools. Amazing how some people can bring wild sucess and others can't do anything better than sue (SCO) or intimidate (RIAA).

Re:I must ask..

[here4fun]

they will probably leverage all the people who have yahoo accounts. people trust yahoo, and use it everyday for email, fantasy sports, movie info, etc. the amount of free advertising they would get would be huge. unlike if i started getmusicfromme.com, nobody would know about it and nobody would think it would be a universal format. i bet yahoo is banking on people using them because they are so well known.

Re:Wow, just like they manhandled the TV networks!

[caddisfly]

...maybe it is the morning, but I thought this should have been moderated as "funny" or at least sarcastic. ;-)

...downloads are becoming more and more of a commodity item.

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?

...time will tell. Right now, ipod is cool and has established name/concept recognition that no one else can touch. It is still the crown jewels and no one else will ever produce an "ipod" except Apple. I would imagine a large percentage of the consumer market couldn't name another music player other than ipod. It is kinda like Kleenex and Sheetrock.

And we already know that Apple produces better software

....we will see if this matters.

Have these idiots learned NOTHING?

[dpilot]

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.