Yahoo Music Unlimited

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Launched on May 11, 2005, Yahoo! Music Unlimited is an on-demand online music service provided by Yahoo! Music. Users paying a fee can access a library of over two million songs which can be streamed from their computer in near CD quality sound. Subscribers can also download songs at a discounted rate of $0.79 per song for transfer to CD or supported portable devices.

Billing

Yahoo! offers two billing options: $8.99 monthly, or $71.88 billed annually (calculated to $5.99 per month). To transfer downloaded music to a compatible portable music player, an additional $6 per month is added to both plans. The subscription services are only available for users living in the USA or Canada and require a credit card (no other billing method being accepted).

Before November 1, 2005, the To Go feature was included at no extra charge. However, experts believe that this was done in order for Yahoo! to promote their service.

Features

Users who subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited are able to stream and download an unlimited number of music tracks, but Janus DRM (digital rights management) technology prevents these tracks from being accessed once a user's subscription is discontinued or expires. Thus, if a user wishes to download and own a music track, they must pay an additional fee. The digital rights management employed by Yahoo prevents a user from freely distributing these tracks.

Users living outside the USA or Canada can still download the player and enjoy the features of the Yahoo! Music Engine, a software product that basically functions as a music collection organizer in a similar fashion to that of iTunes.

Yahoo! tech support has reported that Windows Media Audio codec, similar to MP3, is used at 192 kbit/s for all songs. This is a high-quality encoding and without high-end playback equipment, nearly indistinguishable from CD.

Similar Services

Napster To Go and Rhapsody Unlimited, provided by Napster and RealNetworks respectively, are both similar to Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Subscription fees to these services are slightly higher. Yahoo also offers Musicmatch On Demand, a streaming music subscription service available through the Musicmatch Jukebox client. Effective, August 31, 2007, Musicmatch Jukebox will shut down. Musicmatch is offering a temporarily free migration to Yahoo Music Unlimited. [1]

Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go Discontinuation

The original Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go offering launched May 11, 2005 allowed users to download songs to supported portable devices. On November 1st, 2005 launch access to the "to go" service was raised to $11.99 per month.

Around September 10th 2007, all mentioning and links to the Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go were removed from Yahoo's online properties. No official announcement has been make regarding the cancellation of the "to go" service, but it is no longer available for purchase online and on September 10th the Wall Street Journal reported that the Yahoo Music division may be slated for cutbacks and restructuring.[2]

Regions

The service is currently only available in the United States and Canada. However there is a future possibility of the service rolling out to the UK and the rest of Europe in the near future.

See also

• Yahoo! Music
• LAUNCHcast

External links

• Yahoo! Music Unlimited
• List of devices compatible with Yahoo! Music Unlimited To Go
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited Reviewed
• Yahoo Music Unlimited Developer Ian Rogers Discusses The Service

References

• Yahoo! Music Unlimited launches
• Yahoo! Raises Fees for Online Digital Music Service
• Yahoo Music Apparently Slated for Cutbacks