Yahoo Has Entered The Game
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=785
Last year Yahoo bought Musicmatch but since then, they have operated as 2 different companies. Yahoo just announced it will enter the digital music world with a subscription service for all mp3 players except the ipod. This will be the same as Napster To Go but the difference is the price, $6.99 a month instead of the $14.99 Napster charges. Yahoo has about a million songs in its catalog, most likely from the purchase of Musicmatch. There are no details regarding the downloading software, whether or not it will be from Yahoo.com or a separate app. I am not sure if they will keep the Musicmatch pay service or not but its just another company trying to take away marketshare from Apple.
The price is good, its rumored that it could be about $60 a year for the service if paid in full, thats not a bad price to rent music which is essentially what you are doing. They in turn will drop the per song charge down to .79c which could trigger a price war with Apple. This leaves Apple as the only other major player not offering a subscription service. Do I think they should have one? Yes, it would be good for some people, I would never use it but seeing that there are over 10 million ipods out there, some will. Should it be priced as low as Yahoo, yes but I don't see that happening. Steve Jobs has denied any type service for iTunes but that could change in a second if Yahoo takes off. Who knows, Steve probably has the service already lined up and ready to go, he is just waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger.
What does this mean to all of us, it means that the free lunch of music we have been living on for the last few years is finally coming to a close. There will still be ways to get it on the net, that will never change but the major P2P will become more and more unattractive. I enjoyed the ride, found lots of new bands, replaced old tapes and saved lots of money. Its probably time we grow up and faced the fact, but until Apple throws their hat into the ring, I say run wild. Apple will perfect this distribution and just sit back til that moment happens.
Posted by mardenhill 5/11/2005 09:14:00 AM
