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."

Comments

DRM

[MrJules]

...devices supporting Microsoft's Janus digital rights management technology. jon.... Jon?

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems quite reasonable to me. I mean, let's say the average subscriber is 20, and keeps this service until they are 100. That's 80 years at 5 bucks a month, or around 5,000 dollars. That'd buy you 5,000 songs which you can do with what you want, or you could listen to a MILLION (and that number will probably go up quickly) songs whenever you want, for the same price. And in the latter case, you get to pay in installments of $5/month, and enjoy the whole library for the entire 80 years. To own the 5,000 songs and enjoy THOSE the entire 80 years would require an upfront payment of 5 grand.

Another bonus of the subscription service: when they add a thousand more CDs to the catalog, you don't pay anything more than that 5 bucks a month, and boom, you have access to all of them. Every time they add another 100 CDs to the library, it's like you got them for free.

Who cares if it's DRM'd, as long as you can listen to what you want when you want. The only major downside of DRM, if it's unobtrusive enough, is that you can't give away the music to others. But big deal - anyone not willing to shell out a measly 5 bucks a month doesn't really like music anyway.

And while the music is lossy, 192k WMA is like 384k MP3 - which doesn't even exist, since 320k is the maximum quality (at least on any software I know of). Whatever loss there may be isn't going to be discernible by 99 percent of the human race. The other 1 percent, if they're that picky, can always buy CDs, sacrificing library size for an infintesimal increase in audio quality.

I think this is really a fantastic deal. I would not be shocked if this takes off big-time, with a side effect being an increasingly substantial dent in iPod market share since those stuck with iPods won't be able to get this deal. On the other hand, the iPod folks can keep shelling out a buck a song from iTunes and there's nothing wrong with that. After all, Steve Jobs needs a new Porsche every couple of years.

I have not yet bought a portable music player; I've been holding out for one with 100+ gigs of storage, and there aren't any out there. But when there is, I will make sure that it works with this Yahoo service. If that rules out Apple making any money from my expenditure, well, that's their problem, not mine.

Re:DRM

[Breakfast Pants]

If it takes off the music companies will want more money for their catalogs. So your whole premise is that the introductory price will never rise (and I'm not talking about inflation).

Re:DRM

[Otto]

I mean, let's say the average subscriber is 20, and keeps this service until they are 100. That's 80 years at 5 bucks a month, or around 5,000 dollars.

This doesn't account for inflation over those 80 years, nor the price hike that happens about a year from now because Yahoo Music can't get enough subscribers to justify the low price of the service.

Every time they add another 100 CDs to the library, it's like you got them for free.

Yep, a whole $5 a month worth of free.

Who cares if it's DRM'd, as long as you can listen to what you want when you want.

Exactly! So what if you're forced to use Microsoft certified hardware and Microsoft certified software? So what if you decide to switch to another service that all your music, even the music on your portable device, gets automatically deleted thanks to the Microsoft Janus DRM? So what if you get tied into the service just to keep your existing music working, even though you don't usually listen to new music and download maybe only one or two new songs every month (like, in fact, most people over the age of 25 do according to the most recent polls).

The only major downside of DRM, if it's unobtrusive enough, is that you can't give away the music to others.

Yeah. I mean, who needs to share their interests with their friends anyway?

And while the music is lossy, 192k WMA is like 384k MP3 - which doesn't even exist, since 320k is the maximum quality (at least on any software I know of)

a) 384 kbps MP3 does exist. It's called "freeformat" and MP3 can go up to 640kbps.
b) 192k WMA is closer to 160k MP3, if you're using the proper encoders (read: LAME).

Re:DRM

[aaarrrgggh]

Looking at artist (read label) compensation, if an "average" player holds 1k songs, $5/month is half a penny per song. The only way a label can make a subscription service attractive is if it just their own catalog.

There is no possible way that Yahoo can maintain this price point long-term without subsidizing it.

Re:DRM

[Otto]

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.

Oh good, yet another

[bodger_uk]

pointless DRM based lossy music service. Just what we all need. When will "they" realise that this isn't going to cut the mustard?

Re:Oh good, yet another

[Vo0k]

The problem is, either it's DRM'd or "very few songs". The condition for obtaining permission for selling many of the songs (from RIAA) is that they are DRM'd.
But in the other hand, I wonder if they could go with a hybrid service - DRM only what has to be DRM'd, release the rest as "open". (even if that "only" was to mean 80% of their catalogue)

Re:Oh good, yet another

[bodger_uk]

It's not so much the DRM that bothers me (although it does) it's the formats they put it in. DRM me a lossless format and away we go.

Obviously, I realise the DRM would be cracked in minutes, and we would all have perfect copies of tracks we could do what we liked with, but don't tell me this has occured to the *AAs!?

Re:Oh good, yet another

[natrius]

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.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[justforaday]

"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?

Re:Oh good, yet another

[unclethursday]

I'm willing to bet that this does cut the mustard for most people. If you use Windows and have a WMA player

But, given how much market share the iPod (in all its incarnations) currently has, the prospect of being a Windows user with just a WMA player seems unlikely. If the iPod was just for the Mac, then yeah, you'd be right. But with the iPod also working with Windows, it gave the iPod the market share it now has... which is somewhere around 70%-75% or so of hard drive music players.

Sure, there's more "choice" for Windows users with the ability to buy multiple brands of players with WMA support... but this choice hasn't been cutting into the iPod's market share, or at least not in any noticeable way as of yet.

I don't have any sort of portable digital music player, but if I did, I'd get an iPod, and for various reasons. It's compact and easy to use; it has a decent battery life; and since I have a Mac, it can easily act as a FireWire external hard drive if I need it to. The music I have on my iBook is 4.59 GB... so I could get myself a 40 GB iPod and still have 35 GB of space for other things besides music. I could currently back up my entire hard drive's contents (music included) and still have almost 11 GB left over on a 40 GB iPod.

I can't think of any WMA players that would let me do that, or at least none that would let me do that easily.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[Vo0k]

The evil genius behind some of DRM is that it's hardly crackable (except with some serious quality loss.) If it's in software, it probably will be crackable. If in hardware, much harder.
The idea is that you get all the data encrypted. You can copy, share, spread, mangle, edit it, whatever - it's useless like that anyway. When you want to play it on a DRM-based device, you must first connect to a key server. Your device identifies itself, a secure handshake is performed (man in the middle won't help much, public keys of the device and the server have been exchanged at the manufacture time), then receives the key to decrypt the song, so it can be played. Of course the key may include additional instructions like limit, so you can play it within next 10h and then it should be disabled, or you can play it once only (pay per view), or such, and the device must obey them (otherwise it wouldn't be DRM-approved). In software you should be able to intercept the key, then bundling it with the song, or releasing it decrypted you could keep copying it. For embedded devices it's much harder because you won't be able to authenticate as the keyserver or the device and the key is transferred by secure means. All you can do is to re-encode the analog output, i.e the video or audio that is being sent to screen/speakers. With obvious quality loss. Anyway, still, to obtain the key you must "purchase" it by some legal means, i.e. the DRM'd song contains unique ID with a flag "paid", then you get the key and the ID is removed from the "paid" list so when the key expires for some reason (i.e. pay per view), you need to pay again. Also, someone else with a copy of your song won't get the same key again without paying again...

Re:Oh good, yet another

[shutdown -p now]

How exactly would a portable player connect to a remote key server?

Re:Oh good, yet another

[dsginter]

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.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[Tim C]

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.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[Anonymous Coward]

When you want to play it on a DRM-based device, you must first connect to a key server.

So besides limiting the user on his computer, they can also get data on exactly how and when you use their products? You usually get a shiny Google Toolbar or a pack of smileys for giving away information like that.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[JFitzsimmons]

Actually, the consumer does care. I've talked to plenty of people that have a story that goes like this:

"My Dad downloaded some songs for me from iTunes music store but I can't play them on my computer."

I've never actually had to deal with DRM'd music myself, but I'm under the impression that more than one computer can be authorized for some tracks. Either way, this is another step that the user doesn't understand ("why can't I just copy my files over the wireless network the nice ISP set up for us?"). So while they lose business from the "know what we're doing" techies like we have so much of on slashdot, they're also losing business from the middle-class family that doesn't know much about computers but has plenty of disposable income and several computers in the house. I don't know about Microsoft's DRM but I suspect it isn't simpler than Apple's.

In conclusion, the user does care about DRM, they just don't know what it is, or why it is there. The see the symptoms and that is a major turn off because they don't really know what is causing it. On the other hand, I would guess that you're probably right about lossy vs lossless; they don't care.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[CUGWMUI]

I believe some DRM schemes intend for the key to be downloaded/applied at the time of transfer from a computer to the portable player. Of course, this probably won't allow time-based playback limitations to be effectively enforced.

Most of the prevalent DRM schemes are really intended for downloading media via the Internet onto a computer, so there is an implicit assumption of having a computer intermediary capable of enforcing (certain) DRM restrictions.

If you want to listen to music on the go without getting a computer involved, the music companies probably want you to buy a CD!

Re:Oh good, yet another

[badasscat]

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.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[starrsoft]

When you copy the song from your computer to the player, it is set to work for only 30 days. After the 30 days passes, the song will stop working until you hook it up to your computer again and the player checks using the computer's 'net connection to the remote key server.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[damiam]

You haven't bought any music. Anyone who thinks that the record companies would let you buy thousands of CDs for $5 is an idiot. You're very clearly subscribing to the music. When you stop paying for your cable subscription, can no longer watch cable TV. When you stop paying your Yahoo music subscription, you can no longer listen to Yahoo music. It makes perfect sense to me.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[hesiod]

> Anyone who thinks that the record companies would let you buy thousands of CDs for $5 is an idiot.

Absolutely. However, that argument is completely worthless, since there are no CDs involved in this. You are making a point to an argument that was not raised.

> When you stop paying for your cable subscription, can no longer watch cable TV.

When I cancel my subscription, Caomcast doesn't come and erase all my fucking video tapes!

It only "makes sense" to you because you chose that point to argue. If you chose the other side your arguments would probably still make sense. It doesn't mean they are RIGHT.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[Ahnteis]

Why do you need itunes ON YOUR COMPUTER to play songs ON YOUR PORTABLE? The (at least newer -- dunno about older) iriver's require NO software other then a modern operating system that recognizes a portable drive. Drag the songs over in file manager of choice. Works on mac, linux, windows.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[th3space]

I'm always amused by things like this...a band that has for years encouraged the trading of their music amongst their fans (provided they weren't ever charging one another), puts out albums that are nearly impossible for their fans to put on whatever device they so chose.

Now, I know this was likely the labels decision and everything, but the sharing of DMB music, or Phish music, or Widespread Panic, or Grateful Dead, or any other jam band that built a reputation off of word of mouth and tape trading hasn't ever really cut into their selling potential...if anything has cut into DMBs sales, it has been the degradation of the music since they nixed the original Lillywhite Sessions. But hey, doing that helped me save a lot of money, given that I no longer felt the compulsion to buy more DMB albums.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[aBlooMoon]

Don't forget Metallica, the biggest backers of bootleg tapes in their early years turned largest opponent of Napster.

And remember: Napster Bad!

Re:Oh good, yet another

[lidocaineus]

While I am not a fan of software required to use something like a media player, the convenience and ease of use of using iTunes is so dramatic when paired with an iPod, that "dragging and dropping" appears quaint in comparison.

Have a new music track? Drop your iPod into the dock (or insert the cable) and it's in. Shuffled around some playlists? Already done on your iPod. Edited a SmartList to only include tracks imported between August 2002 and January 2004 beginning with the letter "I" and under two minutes long? Same deal. Bought some CDs? Insert into computer, rip, and plug in iPod. Killed that track that reminds you of the car accident you were in because you talked to your ex-gf while cruising through a red light? Auto deleted from the iPod.

The iPod is meant to be iTunes carried around. Other companies take it the exact opposite approach: that's the problem with other players - they are portables with software hacked on top of them (or lack thereof, as in drag and drop files). Showing up as a portable drive is convenient for various file operations such as backups and file transfers (and yes, the iPod does this). It is not nearly a good enough solution for anyone who has a large collection of music to manage and doesn't want to deal with actually organizing it. That's what computers and software are good at - let them do it.

Re:Oh good, yet another

[Johnny Mozzarella]

I'd be willing to pay that for quite some time.

The article suggested that $5/month was an introductory price for the first year. After that it will probably go up to $10-12 bucks.

wow technology

[xintegerx]

$60 a year for music? I bet that this will encourage the prices of WMA players to drop, and hackers cracking the WMA format. By June 2005, we will have unlimited mp3's for $60 a year. Maybe somebody will create a file sharing network that will decrease the price even further.

Re:wow technology

[natrius]

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.

Call me crazy, but...

[pyite]

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.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[rokzy]

half by number of player models maybe, but not half by number people have actually bought.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[samael]

When that portable player doesn't allow anyone else to support them, what else do you suggest?

And Apple survives on 5% of the home computer market - why can't Yahoo survive on the 20% of the portable player market?

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[rokzy]

>When that portable player doesn't allow anyone else to support them, what else do you suggest?

this is the biggest load of BS ever. please explain yourself. why can't other people support mp3 constant, mp3 variable, AAC, wav etc. ?

the only thing that you can be sure of is that if you have DRM WMV the only people legally using your service are Windows users. seems like yahoo is the one denying support from people.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Rhone]

when its format doesn't support the player

That's quite an interesting way of putting it. I don't think I've ever heard of a format not supporting a player/program/whatever. I would have thought that it's the player that doesn't support the format, but maybe I'm just weird.

If Apple cares about their customers enough, they can release firmware updates to allow iPods to play WMA. (Well, assuming firmware updates are possible with iPods... maybe I've just been spoiled by my Neuros.)

On a side note, one of my roommates wants to buy an iPod soon. Knowing that he doesn't have a lot of money to spare, I started telling him about other mp3 players that would be a better deal for him. His response was, "Yeah, but I want to use iTunes."

How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[pyite]

How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?

Because, as has been said a million times, there's nothing monopolistic about the iPod. You can play MP3s on the iPod JUST FINE. Don't sell WMA, and you'll be alright. And don't say that the RIAA won't allow it, because emusic.com has been selling non-DRM plain vanilla MP3s for some time now.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[unclethursday]

How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?

Without owning an iPod or other digital music player, I can only speculate.

I would assume it's for ease of use. iTunes synchs up with iPods, and allows for quick playlist changes and updates as well.

I don't know if other digital music players do this, or if they plan to. But I do know, from seeing my friend's synch up their iPods, that the ease of use for moving songs from PC/Mac to the iPod is a definite plus for people. No finding the folder and manually dragging the files, just choose the files you want, and they head on over to the iPod. If the other players don't have this ease of use, well, then Average Joe Users might not like them.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[1010011010]

How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?

Because Microsoft cares about control and winning at all costs, whereas Apple cares about making a good product.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[BenjyD]

You're comparing two different figures: Apple's actual market share, and Yahoo's potential market share: i.e. the percentage of people who *could* be customers.

The *potential* market for Apple computers is anyone looking for a computer (100%), and they get 5% of them. The potential market for Yahoo is 20%, and they will then get some fraction of that.

Of course, discussing market share figures like this assumes that only people with portable music players buy music online.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[samael]

The only reason Apple is allowed to sell mainstream music is because they support DRM.

Yahoo will not be allowed to sell mainstream music without DRM. They cannot use DRM on the IPod. Therefore they cannot sell mainstream music for the IPod.

It's not complicated.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[cassidyc]

and so by "Making a good product" Apple then controls, and is winning at all costs...

sigh

CJC

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Gerad]

It's simple: because Microsoft is a convicted monopoly, and actions that are allowable if somewhat morally questionable when you're a normal company become illegal when you're a monopoly.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Edgewize]

...and locking people into the iTunes store is the most profittable thing they can do. It also get many of those buyers thinking about buying a mac.

Apple has admitted, on several occasions, that they make very little money off of the iTunes music store. Their RIAA fees and operating costs eat up almost all of the 99 cents per song. The iTunes music store is nothing more than a way to sell iPods. (As an added bonus, iTunes introduces people to Apple's look-and-feel and creates a few more potential iMac buyers.)

If Apple let other companies license iPod-compatible DRM, they would not be abandoning a major revenue stream. And if the licensed songs still had to be transferred via iTunes, there would be no loss of side benefits either.

As long as iPod+iTMS is the popular choice, Apple sees no need to open their DRM. But I bet that they will cut licensing deals in a heartbeat if they start hemorrhaging market share.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Skuto]

>What makes you think Apple would license AAC to any
>store or portable-player company for any less than
>exorbitant fees?

Apple cannot license AAC, they don't own it. It's an open standard.

Apple does own the DRM scheme they apply on top of it.

But iPod's can play unprotected AAC's, too.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Mr Smidge]

.. whereas Apple cares about making a good product.

Apple are a business too. A more balanced statement might go like this:

Because Microsoft cares about control and winning at all costs, whereas Apple also cares about making a good product.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[wootest]

A big part of why Apple survives in the home computer market is by providing good tools to a niche market - design, video editing, etc. Of course this is not their only market, but it's their bread and butter because they get to sell G5s to them, like office machines are Microsoft's bread and butter because they get to sell Office and desktop and server versions of Windows to them. Apple thrives in this market.

Yahoo seems to offer a very good alternative to the other subscription services (low price, high bitrate, modularity in the system although I don't know yet about the size and quality of the catalog) and will likely also thrive in their market - subscription services. What remains to be seen is if subscription services are actually widely used and if they generate enough money to make it worthwhile for the vendor and the labels.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[AndIWonderIfIWonder]

Every one seems to have missed that the Yahoo Music Engine is not just a music service, but is also a jukebox.

It does support the iPod as lond as you use non DRMed MP3s or even AACs. See this screenshot.

It's only buying DRM tracks from a music store that "locks" you in to a player. If you buy your CDs online and rip them yourself you probably end up saving money and don't have any DRM issues.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[minus_273]

"Apple does own the DRM scheme they apply on top of it."

no, Apple does not own fairplay, Veridsc does.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[wootest]

And Microsoft doesn't sell computers.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Patik]

It's more like this:

Microsoft cares about winning and their strategy is control, whereas Apple also cares about winning but their strategy is making a good product.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[aliquis]

"How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?"

I can only talk for myself, but as I see it Apple is innovates, and delivers a good product, a product they deservs to have some protection for.
Microsoft on the other hand replicates, and try to figure out a way to block everyone else out.

Also Apples usage of Mpeg4/H.264, rendezvous(spelling..), bonjour, MP3/AAC, are open/available on a broader market (mp3 and mpeg4 aren't as "open" as I would liked them to be thought). Microsoft on the other side most do it their way, I don't remember what network stuff they made in some weird way earlier, they uses WMA and WMV, if they made something like rendezvous it wouldn't be an open format and so on.
Also Apple probably gives some kind of feedback/money/resources/code/.. to the FreeBSD people, althought I don't know, I guess they return code to KHTML and so on.

Althought I like free things, I can't say I myself would have liked to work for free and get nothing, so I do understand some coders/designers/.. want money for their products and work. So just because Apple tries to make a profit doesn't mean they are evil. (They should be more helpful regarding mac clones and other oses than macos support on their macs thought. On that point they aren't good at all. Being able to run MorphOS/AmigaOS on the mac would be cool =))

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Jeffrey Baker]

Real's reverse engineering consists of putting their own DRM format onto the iPod, not cracking the iPod's native DRM format. Real also had to whip up their own code to work with the iPod's song database, but there are lots of open projects doing that.

Here's what Apple's FairPlay DRM means for users: any iPod can play any iTMS-purchased AAC, which implies there is a master key for decoding the FairPlay file. Apple's software respects the flags in the FairPlay file which indicate what computers are authorized to play the file. Other software may ignore the flags and decode the file anyway. You do need certain decryption keys to do this (see JHymn, PlayFair).

So the iPod will play any AAC file (protected or unprotected), any regular MP3 file, and any regular uncompressed PCM file. The only reason Real needs to jump through hoops is because they want their stupid DRM format to work.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[samael]

"The iPod also has its own encrypted key repository. Every time a FairPlay-protected track is copied onto the iPod, iTunes will copy the user key from its own key repository to the key repository on the iPod. This makes sure that the iPod has everything it needs to play the encrypted AAC audio stream."

At least according to Wikipedia.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Snocone]

If Apple cares about their customers enough, they can release firmware updates to allow iPods to play WMA. (Well, assuming firmware updates are possible with iPods... maybe I've just been spoiled by my Neuros.)

Judging by the "iTunes-wma.icns" icon sitting right out in the open in the iTunes /Resources folder, I suspect that if Apple ever decides that WMA has become important enough that a monetarily significant portion of the consumer market gives a shit, it won't even take a firmware update.

Same for the also present "iTunes-ogg.icns", for that matter...

How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?

For it to be 'pretty much the same thing', Apple would have to be bullying record labels into not providing their catalogues to competitive music services. As far as I know, nothing along those lines is even hinted at.

But merely tying Apple's service offering to Apple's hardware offering, while the actual product (ie music) is completely fungible and completely available to anyone who cares to put together a competitive service/hardware package ... that I at least do not consider to be 'pretty much the same thing', and Apple has no moral obligation whatsoever to allow people to pick and choose which of those complementary offerings they want to compete with. If they have the same access to product that Apple does, and can't put together a competively compelling end to end experience out of it ... well sucks to be them then doesn't it.

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[Queer Boy]

Actually, most available statistics suggest that Apple's iPod has between 25% and 35% market penetration in the HDD-based portable audio player market.

WOW, you know, they don't get statistics for sales of players by doing an informal survey. You live in a fascinating little world if you think that way.

There are hard numbers as to how many devices are shipped, just as there are in computers, and IDG tracks those hard numbers and reports them.

Bandwagon, much?

[pieterh]

The lifestyle segment will use iTunes.

The power music consumers will use allofmp3.

What segment are Yahoo selling to exactly, the confused?

Re:Bandwagon, much?

[BabyDave]

The! People! Who! Love! Exclamation! Marks!

(with apologies to The Register for nicking their standard Yahoo! joke)

Re:Bandwagon, much?

[Tim Browse]

I wish someone would steal The Register's Yahoo! joke - and I mean the proper sense of the word steal, i.e. not copyright infringement, but taking it away from them so they can no longer use it.

Re:Bandwagon, much?

[syrinx]

Actually, wouldn't it be the confused who are using allofmp3? I.e., those who think it's somehow legal?

Re:Bandwagon, much?

[lidocaineus]

The power music consumers will use allofmp3.

No they won't. They'll still go to their local record store and maintain the probably years-long relationship they've had with the folks running the store. They'll buy the CD or vinyl, rip it, and store the originals somewhere immaculate. Don't you know anything about real music freaks? The idea of not owning a track is abhorrent to them, and lossless compression is the devil only to be tolerated on low end equipment such as an iPod (and even then, there's always Apple Lossless).

Re:Bandwagon, much?

[fermion]

It is the average person segment. The person, or, more precisely, teenager that now spends his or her entire time at school schemeing on how to get the computer to log onto Yahoo music videos. The teen that needs the music to be part of the peer group, but does not have money to buy a CD. And remember singles are a rarity.

There is no judgement on the quality of th music. There is no imagining that the song is going to be entertaining any longer than it takes to show the other students that you have the hot new song. Who cares if the lease will expire, there will be a new song next week.

So, as long as a kid can get a player for $99, he or she will find the time to plug it into the front USB port at school, and get the requisite dose of music. And for $5 a month, you buy acceptance.

Re:Bandwagon, much?

[Alsee]

It is legal in Russia, almost certainly legal in Canada, and uncertain legality to buy from other countries (not that there is ANY chance you'd ever be sued over it even if it is technically infringment to receive it in your country.).

So about the only 'catch' is that the artists get paid essentially nothing because of a bug in Russian law. If the bug were fixed the price would obviously go up a bit, but MP3 sales would still be perfectly legal without needing to bow down to RIAA restrictions.

The reason all the other sites are essentially a uniform buck and impose essentially uniform and opressive DRM terms is that the RIAA members conspired with each other to exclude price competition and to exclude format competition and to exclude DRM terms competition. In other words it's a cartel conspiring to abuse their monopoly power to suppress competition and abuse their copyrights to control formats and playback devices. All things that would/should ordinarily warrant a big fat smack down by the DOJ for multiple flagrant antitrust violations. By the way, congress was floating a bill to exempt the MPAA and RIAA from prosecution for violating antitrust law, and Orrin Hatch was a huge supporter of the bill (or possibly even its sponsor) and he's currently head of the copyright law committee. So you know that if any antitrust prosecution were started against the RIAA that that bill would be whipped out and hit the floor faster than you can say 'corporate shill'.

-

Threat to iTunes? No way

[Hieronymus Howard]

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.

Re:Threat to iTunes? No way

[numark]

The iPod Shuffle is a flash-based player.

Re:Threat to iTunes? No way

[robbieduncan]

iPod Shuffle? http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

Thanks, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Thanks, but no thanks

[lisaparratt]

And all I want is global domination over men, to live in a palace surrounded by a sea of sapphires, and eat chocolate all day long without getting fat.

About as likely to happen, too, unfortunately :(

Re:Thanks, but no thanks

[1010011010]

The biggest advantage of Apple's FairPlay over Microsoft's DRM is that FairPlay establishes one set of rules for all items purchased via ITMS. With WMA, the rules are variable. You're never exactly sure what you're getting. FairPlay is a better deal for customers, and a more understandable one.

Look at it another way. Hilary Rosen is advocating the death of ITMS and the iPod and their replacement with WMA-based services. What does that tell you about the two systems?

Re:Thanks, but no thanks

[jb.hl.com]

It's called "MP3".

Re:Thanks, but no thanks

[As Seen On TV]

And while we're wishing, I'd like a pony.

Re:Thanks, but no thanks

[Tim Browse]

I pick up 2 DVD's instead of 1 CD.

Are you comparing like for like? Or is this a new CD vs 2 'bargain' DVDs? e.g. here in the UK, play.com sells most CDs around the £8 to £11 mark, whereas DVDs mostly range from £7 to £15. Maybe it's different where you are.

The package. One maybe 2 great songs and filler.

You need to listen to better artists :-). Besides, one man's "filler" is another woman's "awesome album track", in my experience.

The compression. Most CD's now are compressed to increase the percieved loudness much like most FM broadcast stations.

But isn't it likely (or even inevitable?) that digital audio files will suffer from the same thing? i.e. be mastered from the same digital source, once it's been compressed?

Personally, I still buy CDs. DRM is just too much of a pain in the neck. With non-DRM'd music I can play it on any PC I'm using, and not have to give a toss whether it's got iTunes and my account set up, etc. The way iTunes is designed, in order to play a music track on a PC, you have to install Quicktime on the PC as well - not everyone wants Quicktime on their PC to be honest. And so on.

Plus Apple's delightful policy of "if your hard disk dies, you're free to buy all the music again!" Gee, thanks.

The only reason I'd buy a DRM'd song is if I only wanted the song and not an album. But I'd only do that as long as, e.g. hymn was still working.

CDs are not much of a hassle - I don't buy them often enough that ripping them is a chore. Ripping all my CDs initially took ages, but now my PC can rip a CD ludicrously quickly, and with always-on internet it gets the track names etc without me having to mess about getting on the net. There's just not enough of a downside to CDs for me to stop using them at the moment.

Plus, all CDs come with this great free robust silver backup disc, so I don't have to worry about that, either :)

Re:Thanks, but no thanks

[Tim Browse]

Spot the odd one out:

• Think Different
• The computer for the rest of us
• Leading The Way
• The power to be your best
• Less is more
• The best keeps getting better
• Welcome to the digital music revolution
• Quit whining and take some responsibility for backing up your f$%king data

bankrupt

[tdmg]

T3 ani i2 users (like myself) are gonna bankrupt Yahoo and Napster. Do these companies have any limits at all? Otherwise, they are doomed. I could easily download thousands of songs in a day, bursting their $5 threshold. The majority of users won't download that much. I'm sure they have educated economists working it out, but when I see something that looks too good to be true it's usually because it is and I'll get reamed by some legal clause or their company's might as well skip to chapter 11.

Re:bankrupt

[Hungus]

form TFA:

"As with any such music service, songs will become unplayable if the subscription lapses. Alternatively, users can purchase individuals songs they wish to keep indefinitely for 79 cents, or 99 cents for customers who forego the monthly fee."

So if you stop paying th emonthly fee you will either get a hudge bill or have a lot f useless data on your hands... until the authentication is cracked of course.

Re:bankrupt

[beelsebob]

The problem is that you'll be paying that $5 a month for the rest of your life... and Yahoo are perfectly capable of increasing the $5 to say... $1000 a month, and then where will you be, you'll be paying $12000 a year to keep your music, or you'll be listening to a lot of silence.

Subscription models *do not* work.

Re:bankrupt

[SeattleGameboy]

Really?

That is amazing. And just to think, I've been paying $50/month on HBO, ESPN, Comedy Central, etc. subscription.

I better tell my cable company that their model does not work since they can charge me $1000/month next month.

Brilliant!

Hey George!

[camperslo]

Forget that WMD thing we never found across the planet, there's WMA right here and WMV around the corner.

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried it out, the DRM is an annoying voice at the beginning of each song that goes "Yahooooooooo-oooooo!". Noone will copy that!

Re:haha

[ceeam]

They don't offer anything besides country?

Re:haha

[tdemark]

Sure... they also offer Western.

Won't play on my MP3 players

[jedrek]

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.

Re:Won't play on my MP3 players

[The Cisco Kid]

WMA is the lock-in(out), not the iPod. Afaik, Ipod will happily play MP3 (If not with the stock software, then certainly with alternate software), which is the only 'not locked in' format.

I would never subscribe to any sort of music download service unless I was able to either directly download MP3, or convert whatever it was *to* MP3 (real MP3, not WMA-pretending-to-be-MP3)

Re:Won't play on my MP3 players

[TheRaven64]

I bought my iPod (3G) before the iTMS was lauched, so it clearly was not designed to lock me into a particular service. I bought it because the UI was the best I had seen on a portable player, and because it supported AAC, which I found to give better audio quality than MP3, WMA, or Ogg Vorbis[1] (for my music, in my ears - this is a purely subjective judgement). The player supports MP3, MPEG-4 audio, as well as Apple's (proprietary, but license-free) lossless format. There is nothing at all stopping a competing music store offering MP3 tracks, which would be playable on just about all portable digital music players. Choosing WMA immediately limits them to 20% of the market, which seems like a bad choice.

Re:Won't play on my MP3 players

[Moofie]

"iPod/iTunes combo is overrated"

You think it's overrated. I don't care how it's rated: It's the best tool for the job.

"too restricted"

I think the restrictions are vastly overblown by haters. You might happen to not like Apple's plan, and you're free to not use it. Nobody's coming to your house with a gun.

"I'm predicting its popularity will decline"

Can't get much higher, so I think you're making a safe guess.

"they can listen to virtually the entire catalogs of their favorite artists for a whole year"

And have it vanish in a puff of smoke when the seller decides [vader] I am altering the deal [/vader]. Don't think it'll happen? You're more optimistic than I am. I'm pretty sure it happened to me with Netflix: I was a prolific user, and all of a sudden, I couldn't get any movies. 50 movies in my queue, all on "delayed availability". Maybe I'm paranoid, maybe they gamed me. I certainly stopped doing business with them.

History tells me one thing: Anybody who gets into bed with Microsoft winds up getting fucked. And not in a good way.

"I wasn't putting you down."

By implying I'm an Apple zealot who would buy white poop. You'll forgive me for misinterpreting your intentions.

"Only time will tell if I'm right about Apple's decline"

Time has certainly told about Apple's runaway, breakout success, so yeah, it'll tell about Apple's decline too.

"but pointing out my failings as a consumer won't change anything."

Only to illustrate that people who believe the hype, rather than their own judgement, often make poor choices. This is an important realization.

I thought MP3 *is* supported

[g2swaroop]

(Extracted from the Wall Street Journal May 10, 2005): The new service, dubbed Yahoo! Music Unlimited, will give individuals unlimited access to over a million music tracks for $6.99 a month, or, alternatively, for $60 a year. The service, which also lets users transfer the songs to select portable MP3-format music players, is priced far below rivals' services: RealNetworks Inc., for example, charges $179 a year for its comparable subscription service.

Re:I thought MP3 *is* supported

[1010011010]

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.

Re:I thought MP3 *is* supported

[adminispheroid]

Let's put it this way. Yahoo will be providing 1) a piece of software that's a media player/playlist/tunes organizer, and 2) a music download service. The piece of software will play mp3s, and will happily transfer them to your portable. The download service gives you WMA files, with DRM. The software will not convert these to mp3.

WMA or WMA?

[martijnd]

They are pretty much dead from the start. My old flash MP3 player supports WMA, so do my DVD players. The fine print is that they do not support any form of encrypted WMA files.

It must be the same for millions of similar devices out there in the "real" world. Imagine 70-90% of clueless first time Yahoo music users trying to figure out why their US$ 60 subscription downloaded WMA files just don't work at all....

I just hope they outsourced the helpdesk support because it will get busy.

paying to not own the music

[coffeecan]

somehow the idea of paying $5 a month, even for unlimited downloads, is unappealing if i dont actuallly own the music. As much as I hate the nature of DRM at least Apple has come the close to drawing a balance between user control and "artists" rights. as fun as it might be to have unlimited access to music downloads I think the psycological barrier of not actually owning the music will keep most consumers out. At least with iTunes when you buy a song you allways have the option to burn an audio or Mp3 cd.

Re:paying to not own the music

[01000011011101000111]

Paying £3 (roughly converted) for unlimited downloads is unappealing because you can't keep a copy? Presumably in the same manner that paying £15 a month for unlimited SkyTv is unappealing bc you don't own a vcr and so can't keep a copy? (Not saying I find it attractive either, just pointing out how it could be to some people).

Re:paying to not own the music

[line.at.infinity]

I have SBC Yahoo DSL. First they give you a discount price for a year, then they jack up the price after that. When I called them about lower priced offers, they say I can get that only if I also get the $80+ per month phone service.

When Yahoo says they charge an introductory price of $5 per month the first year, that means they're going to charge you more after that. And since they're using MS Janus technology, if you don't renew your subscription for next year the software will delete all the songs you've acquired for the first year.

Re:192 KB/s WMA

[natrius]

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.

Not buy!

[littleghoti]

Quote:"If their DRM allows you to do everything you plan to do with the music, then buy it. Novel concept, eh?" I think you mean If their DRM allows you to do everything you plan to do with the music, then rent it. Novel concept, eh?

No thanks. I don't want to lease my music.

[wazzzup]

$4.99 a month is great - really great. If I was running a platform that could play WMA I might even consider it but my Mac and my iPod won't play it. These format wars suck.

Aside from a non-compatible format, I can't stand the thought of all my music going away if I don't want to subscribe anymore. Yes, I can then decide to buy the music but then you're faced with "Okay, I want to stop my subscription and keep these 50 albums but I don't have $500 to lay out right now." Then what? Live without the music or take out a loan.

As a consumer of iTunes music, I am seriously considering going back to CD's so I get the full audio quality, the artwork and I can do whatever I want with it (i.e. send an mp3 to a friend 'hey, check these guys out - you might like them', etc.). While the iTunes DRM is fairly non-intrusive, I'm disliking DRM in any form more and more. I want my music for the long term. I want my kids to be able to play it 20 years from now if they want. I have zero guarantee of being able to do that with my iTunes DRMed music.

Subscription-based services practically guarantee I won't be able to do any of those things.

Who funds these things?

[natrius]

It must be nice to watch this battle over the niche WMA market unfold from the comfort of Cupertino. These subscription services are a disaster waiting to happen. The WMA market isn't large enough to sustain all the vendors out there. Once the first subscription service folds, everyone will stay far, far away from them. "I paid money every month for my music, then it all went away because they had a crappy business model." Tragic.

With Apple's model, there's no dependence on Apple's success for your music to play. You don't even have to depend on any specific hardware because you can burn it all to CD. $5 a month for the rest of my life for a huge library of music is an awesome deal. $5 a month for that library until the service folds and I'm left with no music isn't all that attractive.

Someone needs to point me to the venture capital firms that back things things (except in Yahoo's case). I have an idea for a company. I think I'm going to call it Webvan.

Re:Who funds these things?

[Kagami001]

$5 a month for the rest of my life for a huge library of music is an awesome deal. $5 a month for that library until the service folds and I'm left with no music isn't all that attractive.

I'd have to disagree with that, really. If a subscription service dies, you just switch to another one. You haven't lost anything because you never bought anything in the first place. The DRM'd files on the harddrive are just a temporary cache, not a "collection" to worry about backing up. This assumes, of course, that you don't find yourself forced to buy proprietary hardware for each individual service, in which case you'd lose that investment.
(Whether subscription based services are really a good deal or not is another matter entirely that varies significantly from person to person.)

Re:Who funds these things?

[Heisenbug]

"I paid money every month for my music, then it all went away because they had a crappy business model." Tragic.

"I paid money every month for my electricity, then it all went away ..."

"I paid money every month for my water, then it all went away ..."

"I paid money every month for my cell phone, then it all went away ..."

You aren't paying money every month to buy music, any more than you're paying money every month to buy a cell tower. What you are paying for is the ability to listen to any of the tens of thousands of albums they own, instantly, from your computer. This is not a service that is free to provide, it's not a service that can be replaced by buying CDs, and it's not a service that they don't deserve to make a profit on.

If it's not a service you find useful, fine, but stop treating it like an alternative to buying CDs. It fills a totally different niche, and does it well at a fair price. I'd fund that.

Re:No thanks. I don't want to lease my music.

[NeMon'ess]

Plenty of people will keep buying music for themselves for decades. If it only costs them five bucks a month for all-they-can-eat, that's a great deal. If you stop paying, do you really think Yahoo will delete your list of songs? No. If you start paying again you'll be able to download them over again.

DRM is the future, you can't stop it. Your children in 20 years won't be able to buy plain old music CDs anymore because the RIAA won't release it unsecured like that. If they still sell physical media, they'll have changed the format over to something DRM'd.

Re:No thanks. I don't want to lease my music.

[quis]

I keep all my music on my computer as fairly high quality MP3s, but nearly all of the new music I acquire now comes from CDs, even though I have used iTunes in the past. Using eBay or Amazon Marketplace it sometimes half as much, and the CD becomes a backup as soon as I rip it. If I lose the file, I have no trouble ripping it again, and I always have a high quality copy of the album stored away.

It just seems like CDs are still win-win, whereas the only advantage online music stores have is that you get the music instantly.

XSPF

[Swedentom]

What's also interesting is that the Music Engine supports XSPF, and open playlist standard. XSPF is not yet very widespread, but Yahoo's player has the potential to accomplish that.

See http://www.xspf.org/

Something I don't get

[michaeldot]

Everyone seems to be getting into downloadable music game (I half expect to see a headline announcing Google Music one of these days).

But is this a currently profitable market, or are they gambling on it being so in the future?

The last financial briefing of Apple Computer stated that they had achieved "about break even" for the quarter.

Break even? When iTunes is the currently the biggest thing around. Why even bother. Presumably for Apple, it's to provide a service to encourage more iPod sales with an easy way to fill them with music. But are the other services gambling on a future where many more people are buying downloads?

What if it's another dotcom, where everyone is jumping into the game, but the profits just don't eventuate...?

Zero chance

[WindBourne]

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.

Big deal (so far)

[jht]

So all this is really is a cheaper Napster. Whoopee. It's still separate per-track pricing if you want to buy burnable music, and it still only works with WMA-supporting devices. The one thing Yahoo brings to the table here seems to be the fairly easy plugin extensibility, but it's not for supporting other formats, it's more for "cool stuff".

So, in balance, it's a "nothing to see here, move along", but with the Yahoo brand name associated with it. No one WMA music store has been able to make a big splash so far, because of two things: the iPod rules the market at every price point, and thus far the market really is not terribly interested in subscription-based music - despite the endless efforts of the WMA-based companies and the music industry to convince us otherwise.

In the unlikely event that subscriptions start taking off, Apple'll just add it to iTMS, anyways. Short of a sudden overnight shift in consumer tastes, this Yahoo store will just be fighting for their piece of the 20% of the market that simply refuses to associate with anything Apple.

So What! Nothing has really changed.

[freshBlueO2]

Every since I've been introduced to allofmp3.org, I've learned some things.

1. Rhaposody, iTunes, Yahoo, etc, etc, They all use the exact, Third Party Database.

2. They are all 192 kbps WMA format. Poor quality and codec for the cost.

3. Why pay $0.79 - $0.99 for a single song. 1 min, 3 mins, is that really fair? Buying the CD only saves maybe $5 bucks. All at the cost of not getting art work, a cover, and half a lossly compression quality with a microsoft codec.

- That's why I prefer allofmp3.com.
1. They are a different database.

2. They supoort all formats for most songs:
codecs (Flac, Ogg, wma, mp3)
bitrate (full, static, variable, 256, 192, any)

3. You pay per megabyte, $0.02/mb to be exact. Much more fair. A full, lossless compression, no audio lossed song may cost around $1.00. Where a lesser quality song will be much much less, $0.04 - $1.00. I pay for the quality I want. Now I can get the full quality song minus the art, cover, case, and cd, for about a $5 savings. That's fair.

Re:So What! Nothing has really changed.

[swiftstream]

Two points:

1) iTunes does not use 192kbps WMA. That's a minor nitpick, however.

2) allofmp3.com isn't really legal. Give the RIAA time, and they will figure out how to shut it down, even with Russia's uncooperative laws. Remember, last time they escaped merely on a legal technicality. They can't do that for ever...

Yahoo doing copyright infringement?

[R34L]

I hope Yahoo has contacted Craig @ http://www.flipflopflyin.com/
about the use of his excellent pixel characters.
that they use in the header at: http://music.yahoo.com/musicengine
or more precisely: http://a1568.g.akamai.net/7/1568/1600/7a67bdc80db3 8d/music.yahoo.com/musicengine/images/hdr_main_web _beta.jpg

well hopefully he got paid or something for it...

It's all about convienience

[Danathar]

I used to buy songs off of itunes, but then I realized that I can buy just about ANY CD used for MUCH less off of Amazon. Plus the quality is going to be better than the compressed formats.

If you are willing to wait instead of the "I need it NOW" mentality, you can save yourself a ton of money and have music without DRM and at a better quality.

BUT...if you HAVE to have it NOW...then you have to put up with all of the BS that music download services shove...unless allofmp3.com has a flac version of what you need.....

Potential vs Actual

[BobPaul]

The *potential* market for Apple computers is anyone looking for a computer (100%), and they get 5% of them. The potential market for Yahoo is 20%, and they will then get some fraction of that.

You make a very valid point, but why is the potential for Apple computers 100% when the potential for Yahoo is 20%?

Obviously I understand that the Apple iPod accounts for nearly 80% of the market that Yahoo is entering, but IBM compatibles account for much more than that in the market Apple computer competes.

Just as I would never consider a WMA based MP3 player at this time (I love my ipod, what can I say?) I would also never consider buying a mac. I only buy computers in part form, something Apple doesn't really facilitate.
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Re:Potential vs Actual

[BenjyD]

Maybe. That's the problem with economics, it always assumes a rational consumer ;-)

Yahoo! is on to something here

[amichalo]

To compete with anybody, you have to create market advantage. Going it on Price alone is pretty tough unless you price is REALLY low.

Yahoo! has combined several elements that make this subscription service worth the price of two cups of Coffee at Starbucks:
- Low price that undercuts competition by 50% +
- $0.79 song burn ability.
- Build your own/120 pre-built radio stations that stream commercial free music to your desktop (look out XM/Sirus?)
- plugins for Instant Messenger and other applications that allow you to recommend songs to friends
- Decent 1M song catalog to choose from (though 33% smaller than Apple's 1.5M - too bad)

Yahoo! obviously looked at the landscape and said "we can't be on the iPod and we have to use WMA DRM, so how can we offer something competetive based on what exists today?"

Now, I don't think Yahoo! is going to get the volumes to make this service profitable since $0.99 downloads don't leave much margin for, well, margin. But the service just might put pressure on Apple to release their own subscription service. And that would be a good thing.

Apple Is No Microsoft

[John Nowak]

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!

Re:Why worry about DRM?

[rokzy]

only if you want all the songs on the album and don't have to pay any transportation costs

You have a CHOICE PEOPLE!!!

[SeattleGameboy]

I don't know why people are getting so hung up on DRM thing. Listen up people!!! You have CHOICES!!!

There are 3 primary (legal) ways to get your music now.

1. Buy a CD

Pro: This is the most flexible option. You can burn as many times as you want, get the highest quality sound, nice storage format (CD's are nice and thin and you can fit thousands on a bookshelf), etc.

Con: This is also the most expensive method, especially when you count all the bad tracks on a typical album.

2. Buy a permanent download license for a digital track

Pro: You can burn to a CD (which you can turn into MP3). Your license does not go away as long as your PC does not go away. Download to select portable devices.

Con: Not as high fidelity as CD. Per song price is not better than a CD, if you lose your license somehow, it is good as dead.

3. Get a subscriptioni license for a digital track

Pro: Cheapest by FAR (per song)! Can download to select WMA portable devices.

Con: Not as high fidelity as CD. Your license goes away if you end your service.

Just choose whatever fits you best. What is wrong with that?

Bullocks.

[AkaXakA]

iRiver's players are top quality and have superior sound. This comes from personal testing (iMP-400 & H10) and from reading the main tech forums.

Re:Yahoo vs. Apple?

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

-and you should know that not one word of what you said about Apple or Yahoo was correct.

Yahoo made $205 million net profit for q1 2005, and "excluding the fees that Yahoo pays to its advertising partners, revenues grew to $821m, up from $550m a year earlier."

Apple made $295 million net profit for q1 2005, and "saw sales of $3.49bn, compared to $2bn a year ago, a 75% increase," "the highest quarterly figures in its history and ahead of Wall Street expectations."

Apple is also a debt-free company, and has been since last year.

Based on that, I'd say Apple is much more profitable, has more market capitalization, and is in much more solid financial standing than Yahoo, but then again what do I know? I'm just quoting facts.

You really shouldn't have to log into Yahoo...

[lpangelrob2]

...for this relatively biased blog entry. He's the developer, though, so hey, I'll give him a break.

FWIW, I don't care if people label me a karma whore, and I'm in the "I own a Mac [you insensitive clod]!" segment of "Reasons why not to use Y! media player" below. I highly doubt Yahoo! could duplicate the existing ease-of-use between applications on the Apple platform anyway and still have it be worth their time and money.

Also, while iTunes was an obvious, admitted ploy to sell Apple hardware... it did work, didn't it? :-)

--crap lameness filter--crap lameness filter--crap lameness filter--pretend this is a separator--

While Yahoo! embarks on a proper marketing and PR campaign (shouts out to Liz and Charlene), I thought I'd give you (friends, family, fellow geeks) the real story, human to human, on why you should (or shouldn't) use the new Yahoo! Music Engine.

FWIW, my name is Ian Rogers. I used to work with Beastie Boys, for their record label Grand Royal, at Nullsoft (where Justin and Tom made Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Gnutella), and most recently had a very small company called Mediacode with my main man Rob Lord (who started IUMA and brought Nullsoft up with Justin). We sold Mediacode to Yahoo! in Dec 2003 and Y! has had us in a cave ever since building the Yahoo! Music Engine and some other stuff we can't tell you about yet.

But down to the reason you're reading this. I'm asking you to ditch Windows Media Player (aka WiMP, sorry John, Mark), Winamp (pour out a little liquor), iTunes (sorry Chris and Steve G), MusicMatch (apologies to my new brothers and sisters), Rhapsody (you were my first for-pay love, ya tramp), and Napster (THROW ANOTHER STACK OF BENJAMINS ON THE FIRE!), and use Yahoo! Music Engine instead. (If you're using Foobar2000, keep on, brother man, I ain't going to war with y'all purists.)

Here's why you should switch to the Yahoo! Music Engine:

For the Friends/Family:

* PRICE! $5/month subscription service with subscription downloads (transfer your downloads to your subscription-capable device). Yes, this is the same set of features that Napster is charging you $15 for. This is what they call an "introductory price", kids. Buy a year now. I'm not kidding. It ain't going any lower than this, maybe ever. Buy now or regret missing out on the cheapest year of (legal) all-you-can-eat music ever in your life.
* Personalization! I dunno about you, but ALL the other music services and stores seem incapable of showing me music I actually want without me searching for it. Our pages are PERSONALIZED TO YOUR MUSIC TASTE. The front page for me at the moment contains The Fall, Muddy Waters, Stevie Wonder, Television, and Clikatat Ikatowi. If you know me, you know they're doing pretty damn good.
* CHOICE! If you don't like the idea of subscribing to your music, you can rip CDs, play downloaded music, or even spend $0.99/track if you'd like. Whatever your preference, we make it work. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING TO HAVE FUN WITH OUR PLAYER.
* Community! AOL has the most popular instant message program and not one of their 500 media apps takes advantage of it! LAMERS! Ours allows you to LISTEN TO MUSIC FROM YOUR FRIENDS via Yahoo! Messenger! LEGALLY! YOU HEARD ME! Also, you can find users with tastes similar to you, view their collections, instant message them, whateva. Rad.
* iPod support!Kinda! We support the iPod to the extent that Apple will let us -- which means we support transfer of non-DRM tracks (your ripped and "imported" content) to the iPod.
* Huge catalog of the highest quality files of any paid service. Our subscription service and download store spits out dual-pass 192kbps WMA files. They sound hearty, even in my living room. And, there's LOTS of them. Music everywhere I turn. From mainstream to obscure. 1M tracks and counting. Shatner! Fela! The Germs!
* Free, fast, MP3 (even high bitrates), AAC, Ogg, and FLAC encoding. We support the widest variety o

Re:You really shouldn't have to log into Yahoo...

[iancr]

Here ya go, I made it available on my other weblog, for those who don't have a Yahoo! login.

http://www.fistfulayen.com/

ian

Re:You really shouldn't have to log into Yahoo...

[iancr]

Hi Rob.

The plugins are quite a bit different from what was possible with Winamp. They're really meant to build services into the app, so they have access to the playlist engine, etc, rather than the audio stream.

To be honest I'm not sure how the price will change. If you buy at $4.99 for a year now, you're guaranteed a year at that price. Some outlets are reporting a likely surcharge for portability eventually. Not sure.

We're certainly not the fastest in every way, but with a well-written 6MB download-size, no MFC, ATL, or GDI+, we're not bloated, either. For an app that does what we do, the performance is quite good. For the most part we're bound by the network and the DLLs we work with, not the speed of the app.

ian

1Million songs + Plug-in Architechure

[Johnny Mozzarella]

This begs two questions

1) How long till some industrious chap writes a plug-in that will strip the DRM, convert to AAC and sync it with an iPod?

2) How soon can Apple make an iPod that holds Yahoo's 1 Million songs?

Re:Yahoo vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on that, I'd say Apple is much more profitable, has more market capitalization, and is in much more solid financial standing than Yahoo, but then again what do I know? I'm just quoting facts.

Well you'd say wrong. As of writing this, Yahoo's market cap is around $47 billion, and Apple's is around $27 billion.

This difference in market cap is a result of the fact that Yahoo's profit has been growing far faster than Apple's, thanks to significantly higher margins, and the fact that Yahoo's current balance sheet shows a total equity of around $7 billion, compared to around $5 billion for Apple. Both companies have several billion in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments.

(Disclaimer: I own Yahoo stock)

Subscription? Bah!

[Otto]

Let's see..

-99 cents to own a song for, essentially, forever...
-or $5 a month to rent it for, essentially, forever...

I've got enough monthly bills without adding one more to the mix, thanks. I don't need WMA's music rental model, at any price.

What did you think when you tried the product?

[hitsman]

It's easy to read articles, sit on the sidelines, and make peanut gallery comments in theory about this product/service. I'm more interested in reading what others who actually tried the service think of it.

How's the personalization working for you?

What do you think of the feature where you can browse music from friends and members with similar music tastes?

Have you tried the smart shuffling feature?

What do you think of how the service shows you what's already "in My Music" while you browse around it?

What do you think of the similarities explorers? How about the user profiles?

How about plugins?

What bugs are you finding in the beta?

What new feature ideas do you have for this sort of service?

http://music.yahoo.com/musicengine

Everyone does that. Ipod locks out ***

[Ahnteis]

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.

No it doesn't cut the mustard.

[big-giant-head]

I bought 3 of these files recently, not from Yahoo, but another well known co. They were the WMA format. Once I got them I wanted to burn them to CD, well you can't. On top of that the next day I ran the Windows Media player, I got some message that it was 'updating my catalog' or some such nonsense. After that the WMA files would'nt play, said they could'nt find the codec. I called and emailed the place I bought if from, they said it was a windows problem, sent me to M$, they said it was a problem with the place I bought it from. This went back and forth for a couple of days.

Finally I called the CC company and asked them. The nice lady said it sounded like a defective product, she asked if the company I bought it from refused to take care of it. I said yes, she said no problem and struck the charges from my bill.

I downloaded iTunes I ( i don't have an iPod) bought my 3 songs.... and there's a big ole burn CD button on the right top of itunes app!!!! I burned my CD and guess what 1 week later I can play my songs in iTunes, I can play my CD... I know iTunes is DRM'd, but it works as opposed to the Crappy MS wma files with thier server resident codecs.

I'm sure M$ will get thier stuff working correctly in a couple of years, after they have more closely ripped of Apple (as usual). But I like iTunes because it works the way it's advertised. When will companies learn that.

Am I the only one that actually read

[mandrake*rpgdx]

the terms and conditions?

You can buy a burnable copy that is a non-drm'd format that can be transferred to an IPod or anywhere else (a copy you can keep on your hard drive) for 99 cents. If you have the subscription it's 79 cents.

they're not the same thing ...

[Heisenbug]

Subscription services aren't really a competitor to buying music. You're not paying to own music, as you point out. You're paying to be able to listen to any of the ~ 50,000 albums they own, instantly, from your computer. The two important points are: 1) this is not a service that would be reasonable to expect for free 2) it is a service that is eminently useful if you spend much time near Windows and like a wide variety of music.

The same point you made comes up every time there's an article about subscription services. I'm not sure how else to say it: you are paying to be able to listen to any of tens of thousands of albums, instantly, from your computer. If that's not attractive to you, fair enough, but stop criticizing it for failing to be something it's not trying to be.

Yahoo, Napster, whatever. Do they work on a Mac?

[MetaPhyzx]

I own an iPod. Actually, two. I rip most of my CD's and buy from iTMS. While I'm not nuts about DRM (I'm up against the five computer limit allowed), I also don't see a viable alternative. WMA is unacceptable.

Why? Well, I also own several G4 Power Macs running OS X. If you've ever used WMP on a Mac, you'll know it performs horribly. Even if it's the only thing running. I can imagine how WMA files will. On my linux boxes, I don't have a supported option. no iTMS, no nothing.

Yahoo's music service doesn't support my OS of choice. Now, should I bitch and complain that they need to "open" it up? Or, am I served just as well by iTMS (the devil I know) and can realize, that they are somply catering to the majority?

Yahoo's requirements:
*
Yahoo! Music Engine Software
*
Microsoft Windows XP or 2000
*
Internet Explorer 6.0+
*
Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
*
Pentium III 300 MHz processor (WMP for Mac can't even RUN on a 300 MHZ Mac...hell a 600 MHz G4)
*
128MB Ram
*
Broadband connection for streaming and buying music
*
Latest Windows Service Packs

Napster's requirements:

PC only, Napster To Go-compatible player, Windows XP, Windows Media Player 10, Internet connectivity.

So regardless, I'm locked out.

All the railing I've seen in this thread about DRM, about choice, about how easy it is to license WMA... it's does not run/work well on a Mac. it does not run/work at all on linux. It also is not supported via these music stores on the Mac. They don't have a snazzy little front end. So isn't all the bitching about Apple's DRM not providing choice BS? You don't get choice of any other OS with Yahoo or Napster, so if I did have a Rio (which I do, but dont use anymore), I'm still a Mac user, so I'm locked out.

Apple provides that interface for it's own OS (remember iTunes and by default iPods were Mac only for awhile) as well as Windows and I PRAY for Linux soon. So yeah, I have to live with thier DRM, but at least they service my need. To the others Mac users don't exist.

Choice vs. Ease of use vs. Confusion

[theolein]

Disclaimer: I don't own a digtial musice player, but if I did it would be an iPod and there are a nujmber of reasons behind that.

1. Confusion. There is a problem with the various Windows WMA music stores, a big problem: There are too many of them. Napster, Yahoo, MSN, Coke, Wallmart etc. Yahoo's store looks like the cheapest/month, at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that some other store will somehow compete pretty soon. The problem is that these stores are not compatible with one another (obviously) and that there is no vast difference between them. While they all offer subscription, only a few offer the ability to download and buy single tracks. This cannot be stated enough. All of these stores are fighting amongst one another for a small slice of the market. They all claim to be "The iPod/iTunes alternative", but the reality is that they fight amongst one another for the paying twice for the same song. Once to listen to it on subscription, and twice to "own" it forever.

3. Features vs. Ease of use. All of these stores, and especially this Yahoo one, offer loads of features. Look at this idiot geek wetting himself about features like skins and plug-ins. He's basically saying that WinAmp is now part of an online store. The thing is that one of the reasons that the iPod and iTunes is so popular is that it is very very simple. It offers a basic, easy to understand business model. Basically, it is, you pay for a song and you can play and do with it what you want afterwards, basta.

The iPod doesn't have built in TV, FM, or a razor. It just plays music. It's also simple.

Most people just want to listen to their music that they bought. They are not interested in skins for the player, or OGG format or having to fork out next month's payment.

4. All of Apple's competitors complain about the iPod and iTunes not being "open". What they are essentially complaining about is that they don't have a slice of the pie. If they were in Apple's position, they wouldn't open their stuff to Apple either.