September 27, 2007

Yahoo Leadership Meeting Tomorrow; Premium Music Services to be “De-emphasized”

Michael Arrington

31 comments »

Our sources are telling us that tomorrow afternoon Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will be holding a confidential meeting for all Yahoo execs (vice presidents and above, called the “leadership team”) to map out his strategic plan for the company going forward. This is the next step in executing on his promised 100 day plan back in July.

I’m hoping we’ll have the opportunity to live blog the event via one of our sources, which we did the last time one of these was held. Yahoo PR has confirmed to me that the meeting is happening, saying:

Jerry Yang and Sue Decker are committed to making significant changes in the way Yahoo! operates to improve execution and build a winning culture. They are very focused on motivating and aligning key leaders throughout the company to achieve a clear set of goals, and tomorrow’s senior management meeting will be an important step in that direction.

Separately, the company will shortly (today) be announcing a strategic shift away from premium services in the music groupin Vince Broady’s entertainment group, which includes music, games, TV, movies, OMG. Nothing will be shut down; however, people and money (marketing dollars) are moving to other areas of Yahoo. The company will focus on free content over premium services, which are not performing well (music subscription sales in particular are said to be lagging). The changes have been occurring over the last week, look for a Yahoo announcement later today.

Update: Yahoo blog post here discusses streamlining of entertainment group, although they are not talking much about defocusing on premium services. Yahoo PR commented to us: “Yahoo! remains committed to the media priorities of its Santa Monica offices, where these businesses maintain important relationships with key media partners.”

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PTC

September 27th, 2007 at 11:14 am

I see, good for Yahoo though I strongly feel that it also needs to focus on its acquisition strategies to avoid mistakes like the one it did with Facebook last year.
JoeTech.com

September 27th, 2007 at 11:27 am

They should have done this long ago.
Uhhh..

September 27th, 2007 at 11:45 am

I gotta say, Y! Music Unlimited rules.
a Burbank veteran

September 27th, 2007 at 11:55 am

I used to be a big Yahoo fan. My Firefox homepage is still My Yahoo, but that is the extent I would use Yahoo’s service today, unfortunately.

In 2001, Yahoo took a gamble and hired Terry Semel (whom I liked during my movie studio days). The theory back then was that a massive portal like Yahool needed content desperately, so they hired a “content guy” to head the team. Semel, the “content guy”, happens to be a Hollywood man, so be it.

6 years later, the gamble is turning out to be anything but a success, as Yahoo went Hollywood with glitz and “professionally produced” glamor while the Internet zeitgeist went to simplicity (as in Google) and user-generated content (as in Digg, MySpace, and YouTube).

It’s never too late to turn this aircraft carrier around — a daunting task, but can be done. Jerry Yang is smart; he did not go from a poor college dorm rat to a billionaire by being dumb. If this “chuck the premium services and focus on free content” new battle cry I am hearing is true, I think they are heading in the right direction.
Sprezzatura

September 27th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

Sooner or later this re-org is going to have to go after the heart of the matter: Yahoo’s slow and inefficient matrix management structure.
RATTLER

September 27th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

Let us hope …
Patrick Grote

September 27th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

Bummer. I hope they don’t change their Launchcast Plus service. I love it. It’s a great radio.
Lee C.

September 27th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

“Our sources are telling us that tomorrow afternoon Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will be holding a confidential meeting for all Yahoo execs (vice presidents and above, called the “leadership team”) to map out his strategic plan for the company going forward. ”

and
“I’m hoping we’ll have the opportunity to live blog the event via one of our sources”

Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of a “confidential meeting” to discuss strategy?
ollie

September 27th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

maybe if they could just make what they do offer work more smoothly, and stop promising things that never come about, they’d be doing better.
Jeremy

September 27th, 2007 at 2:04 pm

While the management team has changed a bunch in the last (nearly) two years since I left there, it’s still the case that the right hand doesn’t have the same priorities as the left hand.

Unless and until they can sort that core issue out, they won’t be able to budge the stock price, despite all they do.
stone

September 27th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

It’s a sad state of affairs. We’re all witnessing the slow motion destruction of a “once-great” Internet giant.
Kris from Florida

September 27th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

yahoo is frustrating the hell out of me…

I have like 5 domains with yahoo , additionally I have a custom mailbox on a domain that I ordered a year ago.

It was about a year ago when I bought the mailbox, since they tried to charge my card for the custom mailbox again just this week for $34 or something . It did not go through, so they sent me an email to let me know that I have to pay for the mailbox to renew it .

(how about sending a friendly reminder before you charge the card, I know you are not scared of friendly reminders because you send out those about other services you promote )

So I tried to renew the domain with the custom mailbox online, but after trying 3 times to renew the domain without the mailbox it would not go through, so I had to call them .

I was told that I would have to pay for the custom mailbox first, before renewing my domain, after I told them that I do not need my mail box, and I dont want to pay for it . The lady on the phone said that she can not do it otherwise . Is this surreal or what ?

I feel like they are blackmailing me to pay for the mailbox to keep my domain .

I am so frustrated about it, I will transfer all my domains from them, I do not know what the shareholders are thinking about this kind of practices .

Kris
Sean

September 27th, 2007 at 2:44 pm

I hope they don’t get rid of Y Music Unlimited - $6/mo gets me unlimited CD quality music streaming. The program itself is pretty crappy but I have discovered a lot of new music with this thing and I love it! If only iTunes would offer the same feature, even for $15/mo, I would subscribe, just so I could use the music with my iPod!
June

September 27th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

good and brave move for yahoo.
Phillip Marquez

September 27th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

@Sean (#13):

The programming is pretty crappy but you’ve discovered a lot of new music with it?

o.O
whoopie

September 27th, 2007 at 3:22 pm

yahoo has to cut out some businesses. as others point out, it has always been difficult for the company to do

the basic predicate of business at yahoo - that small business units are responsible for their own profit and loss - has spawned an environment where the company has little driving strategy, duplication, mixed messaging, etc.

shutting off some BUs is a start, even if they are marginally profitable. the problem is that almost everything at yahoo makes *some* money - they are good at destaffing and automating low-value (but not *no* value) properties. making the decision to turn off some money is hard, but they have to do it as their new projects demand more heads. hiring is a bitch in the valley, yahoo is already cannibalizing just to staff new ads projects.

as for the music game…i am hoping for amazon to change it. drm is dead and it is time for that message to hit the quarterly reports.
Glenn

September 27th, 2007 at 3:23 pm

The only thing wrong with LAUNCHcast Plus is having to use their “player” in IE; I’d much rather have a stand-alone player like fb2k, or even Winamp, with a plug-in, or at least make it Firefox compatible. The only thing better was MusicMatch OnDemand (before Yahoo! bought ‘em), till they (Yahoo!) started dropping artists from the catalog for just listening… but, hey!, you could buy ‘em in the store… whoopee!

Still, yeah, LAUNCHcast Plus is a truly excellent service (content-wise).
whoopie

September 27th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

oh by the way its amusing they talk about being “behind” the santa monica office…my understanding is that this office has a big “for rent” sign on it (or will soon)…the company is correcting an obvious mistake in its SoCal misadventure
Jeffery

September 27th, 2007 at 5:38 pm

The leak at Yahoo hasn’t moved on or been let go, yet? Who is this person and what incentive would this person have to leak confidential meeting minutes other than some stupid high he/she must get from controlling information flow? Is Techcrunch bankrolling this person? Seriously, if this person doesn’t have the loyalty to keep the info from a confidential meeting confidential, then they should be shown the door.
iHero

September 27th, 2007 at 6:16 pm

The mole is probably the one in charge of customer service — there customer service really does stink. I had a similar go round as Kris from florida. I moved my sites and email to NETSOL.
Tom Chi

September 27th, 2007 at 7:03 pm

Yahoo is about to be reborn. It takes a little doing… it’s time to be patient.
Adrian

September 27th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

I have created a list of 62 of the best music sites for getting full tracks, either for download or streaming. Also, my domain groovetip.com is for sale…
http://blog.wajsbrem.com/index.....music-fix/
Ohio Bob

September 27th, 2007 at 10:14 pm

Did anyone see this:
http://breakoutperformance.blo.....rture.html

Y! is selling off money-making units at supercheap valuations?
And no comment (zip, zero, nada, nothing) from management?
What the he77 is going on?
David Fox

September 27th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

I bought into the premium service inc. the matching Sansa player. Great idea but still very rough around the edges, slow and buggy, and way more convoluted than ipod. And that DRM sure is annoying. Leave the player undocked for a couple of weeks and one gets a “Your license has expired” message. Sheez! I paid for a year already!

But the general idea of large library (though a much better classical selection is much needed) for a fixed fee is great. I’ve found a lot of music.

But I would be hard pressed to recommend Yahoo after trying Rhapsody on my Nokia n800. Better selection, better interface.
nate willard

September 28th, 2007 at 9:47 am

What about Y! Broadway?
silly insider

September 28th, 2007 at 4:23 pm

whoppie nailed it perfectly. get rid of the BUs…the root of the problem…no one is willing to take a risk in the current envrionment. with jerry at the helm now is the time to make this big change. it would of been impossible under terry.

the ship is turning around…albeit slowly.
Jeff

September 28th, 2007 at 11:06 pm

see Brad’s peanut butter manifesto. little has changed culturally since then, though many of the players have.

Sure, some investments have been made, but the root of the problem is that Yahoo doesn’t know how to value investments. They value politics, not performance.