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."

DRM

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

Re:DRM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zero chance

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.

Re:Oh good, yet another

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

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

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

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. [bbc.co.uk]

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

"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

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.

wow technology

$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

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. [magnatune.com]

Call me crazy, but...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

>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...

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...

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...

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...

.. 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...

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...

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 [idg.com] tracks those hard numbers and reports them.

Bandwagon, much?

The lifestyle segment will use iTunes.

The power music consumers will use allofmp3.

What segment are Yahoo selling to exactly, the confused?

Threat to iTunes? No way

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.

Thanks, but no thanks

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

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

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

It's called "MP3".

Hey George!

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

haha

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

They don't offer anything besides country?

Re:haha

Sure... they also offer Western.

Won't play on my MP3 players

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

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)

Everyone does that. Ipod locks out ***

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.

Am I the only one that actually read

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.

I thought MP3 *is* supported

(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

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.

paying to not own the music

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.

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

$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?

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:Yahoo vs. Apple?

-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, [bbc.co.uk] 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, [bbc.co.uk] 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, [apple.com] 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.

XSPF

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/ [xspf.org]

Something I don't get

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...?

Big deal (so far)

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.

Re:So What! Nothing has really changed.

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?

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

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

It's all about convienience

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.....

Yahoo! is on to something here

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

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!

You have a CHOICE PEOPLE!!!

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?

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

...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

1Million songs + Plug-in Architechure

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?

Subscription? Bah!

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.

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

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

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.

Re:192 KB/s WMA

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. [magnatune.com] Put your money where your mouth is.