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Yahoo Introduces Competitor for iTunes
LadyDeath writes "After a year in development, Yahoo has launched its competitor to Apple's iTunes and Napster To Go, a subscription and download music service priced at only $4.99 per month. Tracks are offered in 192Kbps WMA, and can be transferred to portable devices. Perhaps most interesting to the Slashdot crowd is that the Yahoo! Music Engine is built on an open platform that facilitates plug-ins - both DLL and Web based. Podcasting and video playback plug-ins are already available." Update: 05/11 13:06 GMT by T : ian c rogers, formerly of Nullsoft, just led the build of the media player, and writes with information about "the the plugin architecture it supports as well as some of the 20 plugins that are already available for it.
I've posted my thoughts on why someone should or shouldn't use the Yahoo! Music Engine on my blog."
I don't know how a music service that's intended to provide music for "portable players" can succeed when its format doesn't support the player that has 70 - 80% marketshare. It just seems like a losing proposition from the get-go.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
The lifestyle segment will use iTunes.
The power music consumers will use allofmp3.
What segment are Yahoo selling to exactly, the confused?
My blog
It's hardly going to be a threat to iTunes. The DRM WMA files won't play on ipods, which have over 80% of the hard disk player market and 58% of the flash player market.
I'm really getting sick and tired of all these competeing, incompatible and crippled formats.
All I want is a standard format to purchase music in, that works on every player and that allows me to freaking do with the music I bought what I want.
If you're paying $60 a year for music and buying a WMA player, what does hackers cracking the DRM have to do with anything?
By June 2005, we will have unlimited mp3's for $60 a year.
The only thing different from what's available now is "mp3". If you have a Windows computer and a WMA player, the restrictive DRM still lets you do everything you need to, namely play music. It's nice to be the first guy to say "I can't wait until they crack this," but chances are, nothing will change for you when they crack it.
$60 a year for music is cheap, especially for people like me who don't appreciate the value of building up a music collection yet. If their DRM allows you to do everything you plan to do with the music, then buy it. Novel concept, eh?
If the DRM doesn't allow you to do what you want, buy music from likeminded artists.
I, along with MILLIONS of people world wide, own an iPod (and an iPod Shuffle). They are, for my money, the best portable music players available. They sure aren't the cheapest - but I'm not a consumer for whom the prices is the main selling point.
That said, my players won't play WMA, which makes Yahoo's years of development a moot point.
I guess that the millions of 15-35 year olds who paid a premium price for our players aren't Yahoo's target market.
pointless DRM based lossy music service.
It's mainly a subscription based service. It doesn't matter if it's lossy, because you're never converting the music to another format. Ever.
When will "they" realise that this isn't going to cut the mustard?
I'm willing to bet that this does cut the mustard for most people. If you use Windows and have a WMA player, this service seems fine as long as you don't mind all your music self destructing when you stop paying. But honestly, at $5 a month for music, I'd be willing to pay that for quite some time. That's the lowest monthly bill I'd have, and I'd get to access a huge library of music on demand.
Too bad I use Linux and have an iPod shuffle.
"They" will realize it doesn't cut the mustard the moment that "you" realize that 99% of the consumers out there don't care whether it's DRM'd (so long as it's not incredibly prohibitive) or whether it's in a lossy format. Ever realize how most people can't tell the difference between FM and a CD?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
That's the problem right there. When will someone wise up and give us lossless, reasonably-priced downloads? Until then I'll continue to use BitTorrent.
Stop trying to justify your copyright infringement. You don't care about paying anyone, or you'd just buy regular CDs and get your lossless music that way. You really don't understand how to get what you want as a consumer. You stop using the product until they give you what you want. Taking it without permission still perpetuates your reliance on their product.
There are artists who sell lossless, reasonably priced downloads. Put your money where your mouth is.
Just like Napster implies that's the case. Isn't it funny how WMA-based services tend to advertise themselves as MP3-based services? It's like WMA is unwanted by the marketplace, and service providers have to lie about it to sell product.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
DRM is not about control of the music as it pertains to customers giving it away. In the long haul, RIAA is trying hard to make sure that they control the paltform. Right now, their worst nightmare is that the music downright cheap to produce. In addition, the Internet is offering cheap PR/marketing. It is only a matter of time before the net wrest music production from RIAA/Labels and allows every musicians to own their own future.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How exactly would a portable player connect to a remote key server?
When will "they" realise that this isn't going to cut the mustard?
"They" will allow non-DRM formats when people stop sharing them with a few million of their closest friends. That's pretty much the only reason that Joe User would want a non-DRM solution. And yahoo would find it quite difficult to make people delete all of their music after unsubscribing from their service using the "honor system" alone.
It isn't like their going to give in and let everyone have the music for free.
More
If you're willing to swap Firewire for USB, the iRiver hd-based players support WMA (as well as mp3 and ogg) and meet the rest of your requirements.
Mine (an iHP-120) came with a CD, but I've never even unwrapped it. The player presents itself as a mass storage device and Just Works.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This idea that Apple is behaving like Microsoft by not supporting WMA playback is insane. Microsoft were the ones that ran off can came up with their own proprietary format in the first place! Apple is supporting the playback of open standards (mp4) and the most common format out there (mp3). How shocking that they do not support the proprietary format their competitor came up with for the sake of screwing them!
So what? The MP3/digital portable audio market is still in it's infancy. I'd bet that most Americans still haven't heard of the Ipod, and quite a few still don't know what MP3's are.
The current market research doesn't necessarily agree.
Oh, sure, you could argue "only" 22 million Americans is not that big of a number, percentage-wise, but you have to realize that those 22 million Americans also have friends and family members, and once you do, you'll also realize that it's highly unlikely anybody in this country has not heard of the iPod.
It's also more remarkable that this survey did not even include teenagers. So the numbers are likely considerably higher than even that already impressive number.
The mp3 player market is not in its infancy. This is a fallacy that a lot of Apple's competitors seem to like to tell themselves to help them sleep at night. It's a young market, yes, but it is already pretty saturated. It's very hard to get 22 million adult Americans to buy anything collectively, let alone something that was considered a luxury product for ubergeeks just a couple of years ago.
Nokia and others are betting the other way; that the market for standalone digital audio players is going to start to level out soon, and the remaining market (primarily comprised of those who don't need the capacity or battery life of the higher-end players) will turn to cell phones for their music. Obviously, this will still lock out services like Yahoo or Napster.
That's not to say these companies can't make money selling music to the small market they have. But they will never be a serious threat to Apple and the iPod. Sorry, but that's just the reality. Apple is entrenched in a market that has become saturated faster than any I can ever remember.
EVERY @#$@# MUSIC PLAYER WILL PLAY MP3.
The LOCK-IN is that an ipod supports only ONE music service (that offers RIAA files of course).
Because Microsoft is willing to license their DRM (which, ONCE AGAIN is REQUIRED in some form to sell RIAA files -- which is what the mass market wants) while Apple is NOT willing to license their DRM.
If you have an Ipod, you can buy RIAA music from exactly ONE online vendor. Apple.
On the other hand, if you have ANY one of the MANY brands of WMA players, you can buy RIAA music from MULTIPLE online vendors because, once again Microsoft, the big evil corportation, are willing to license their DRM.
Yes, it flies in the face of reason that Apple, who "doesn't make money off itunes, only off ipods" would NOT want to expand their ipod customer base by allowing music from other servicees to play on their portable. Well, it does if you really believe that Apple doesn't view itunes as a cashpot (either currently or in the future).
Please! Love your ipod if you want, but face reality just a LITTLE bit.
As long as the consumer knows up front that Yahoo may change the price at any time, that continued subscription is required to keep what you've 'bought' (I don't know if this is even true for the Yahoo service), then what the hell is your problem? Just don't subscribe if you don't like those terms.
I agree, however I feel it necessary to point out that they're not exactly advertising those terms real loudly, are they? I didn't notice the fine print on Napster ToGo's commercials that said "unsubscribing makes your portable player delete all the music you put on it by itself" or anything. I think that it's not widely understood, by the consumer, that the new "Plays For Sure" players will auto-expire your subscription music after some amount of time. It's not an obvious thing to expect to happen.
Regarding copying for your friends.. that is not 'fair use'.
I would argue otherwise, but even if it's not fair use, I would suggest that the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (section 1008) makes non-commercial use like this immune to civil actions alleging infringement of copyright. So while it may or may not be Fair Use, it's also not illegal to do.
If a service doesn't let you (easily) copy music, that may be a draw back of the service, but it is not the human rights violation that some make it out to be. It's a condition of the music companies license to the service.
True, and I never said otherwise.
The whole bit about MS deleting all your music? Please. Let's talk about reality. MS certified hardware? Hilarious. Why do you kooks always assume that 'Trusted Computing' is a given? Furthermore, why do you think that MS will deliberately piss off all of its customers?
What? You think I'm making this shit up? It's made very clear in the Windows Media 10 SDKs. it's what the whole frickin' Janus DRM is about. It happens [i]right now[/i] if you use Napster ToGo or this new Yahoo Music Service in combination with a "Plays For Sure" player device. It was [i]expressly designed[/i] to do exactly that. This isn't paranoia, it's an honest statement of the facts of the matter.
These services only work on MS Certified hardware. The "Plays For Sure" logo is the certification program Microsoft runs to certify any given player. Look it up! They're not even trying to hide this stuff. They make it's a *selling point* of the Janus DRM for crying out loud.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.