A reader of ours tipped us off today about the recent demise of a highly regarded music service called YottaMusic that was shut down on December 30th after Rhapsody had given the service a December 31st deadline for ceasing use of its non-public APIs and data.
YottaMusic was a music web application started in 2006 that primarily afforded a superior interface to Rhapsody’s streaming music collection, although it also sported social networking features and playlist integration with Sonos and Last.fm. Back in 2006, YottaMusic was permitted access to a set of non-public Rhapsody APIs that allowed it to build its own player and interface for the music service instead of using Rhapsody’s own popup player.
This past May, however, Rhapsody contacted YottaMusic and asked them to start using its public APIs exclusively or shut down the service entirely. Since YottaMusic depended on the non-public API for its Rhapsody interface, and since adopting the standard Rhapsody player would have erased most of the application’s value, the startup ultimately felt forced to fold and shut down operations.
While founder Luke Matkins says that he understands Rhapsody was perfectly within its rights to take such actions, it’s obviously an unfortunate turn of events for YottaMusic’s 10,000 visitors per day. And it’s unclear why Rhapsody was so concerned about YottaMusic providing its own player for streaming music from them. In May, YottaMusic even offered to completely reskin its player, thereby removing all signs of YottaMusic branding. Users playing songs through YottaMusic also had to be paying Rhapsody members, so it wasn’t as though anyone was stealing music. Nevertheless, some undisclosed reason compelled Rhapsody to effectively squash a popular point of access to its service, a move that seems quite rash on the surface of things.
I suspect that a considerable amount of politics are at play here, although I don’t profess to have particularly acute insight into the online music industry. MOG, another web destination for music lovers, recently integrated Rhapsody into its service and now uses Rhapsody’s own popup player to stream songs. So it’s not as though Rhapsody is failing to allow third party applications to spread its service; rather, the player itself seems to be a major sticking point.
YottaMusic is now in the TechCrunch DeadPool.
[News via Bijan Sabet]
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That’s too bad. Luke’s a nice guy and the service is pretty neat. Rhapsody shouldn’t be focusing on shutting down people who are giving chunks of its subscriber base reason to continue paying them… Especially if those people are willing to do all the interface and development work for them.
Is Jay-Z going 2 start a record label with Apple? Will that be the big announcement @ MacWorld on Jan. 15th?
It’s interesting, the biggest problem with exporting your service through APIs is the difficulty in monetizing. Rhapsody if anyone should be fine with allowing APIs that allow users to get more enjoyment out of their service.
I haven’t actually seen Rhapsody in a long time, do they keep ads or any other revenue streams that motivate them to want to bring their users back in?
Can’t say I am surprised but I am certainly disappointed in Rhapsody.
I know that even though it doesn’t look like it, they do work hard to deliver the service they do, but alas it’s painful to use and ultimately stays afloat in part because of their tough CRM efforts (call to cancel, offer of 30 day free, etc).
So when someone implemented a killer UI using their system, it’s a real shame the lawyers killed the fun. Besides, you still had to be a subscriber to use YottaMusic, so nothing bad was going on there. For me, it justified paying for Rhapsody for the past year.
Fred Wilson of USV and Bijan Sabet are similarly unimpressed with this. See below:
http://bijansabet.com/post/22791839
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008.....c-rip.html
This makes Rhapsody look as a dumb as a major record label.
Sounds like backroom politics is driving the train at Rhapsody. Somebody got to the squeaky wheel.
I love Rhapsody but I hate the Rhapsody site/player. Just my luck that I find out about yottamusic only after it shuts down.
@James: there are 0 ads stemming from Rhapsody. Unless I am completely overlooking it, all revenue comes directly from selling subscriptions.
I was a huge fan of YottaMusic and it’s really a shame to see it shut down. I hope that there’s something that can be done to bring it back in some form. If not, best of luck to Luke Matkins on his next venture. He is one to watch.
Funny. Wired had a story on this exposure/problem in the current issue:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m.....f_scraping
Real Player up to their old tricks again.
They might have changed their name, but they’re still a company of slimeballs.
I miss YottaMusic.
I hope Rhapsody changes their tune here.
Thanks for shining a light on this TechCrunch!
It’s things like this that make it easier for me to choose a provider for my online music needs. Scratch Rhapsody off the list.
peace|dewde
FYI, your deadpool link in the article is, er , dead.
I’ve always wondered what the conversations about Yottamusic were like at Real. What do you say when a single guy builds something that blows the doors off your expensive web interface? If they were smart they would have bought it.
Off to figure out what service to switch to.
While I don’t think much of Real, I suspect that there were other forces pushing them along. The big record labels will never learn, and anybody doing something out of ordinary is a threat. Their lawyers will continue to cut their throats until the big labels are gone; I can’t wait for this to happen.
pure idiocy. Yotta brought Rhapsody to the Mac and blew away their crappy web interface. they should have purchased them- instead they just alienated a bunch of their users. i would love to know what genius inside of Real was responsible for this mistake.
sean
We at Rhapsody are also sad to see Yotta discontinue their music community service. The team at Yotta was bright, committed and very creative. They were also great to work with.
In the early spring of 2006, as part of our Rhapsody DNA platform initiative, we made available a set of APIs that gave developers deep access to Rhapsody content. Our motivation behind Rhapsody DNA was simple: Enable the web-savvy spectrum of bloggers to developers to embed music and music content into their web pages, widgets and online experiences outside of Rhapsody.com or the Rhapsody PC client. We’re deeply committed to the Rhapsody DNA platform. The fruits of that commitment can be seen on sites such as MOG.
Despite progress and refinements over the past two years, our APIs are not exhaustive and unlimited: As was the case with Yotta, the breadth and depth of our APIs won’t match the needs of every developer. Additionally, we have guidelines and terms of use for our APIs to protect the legal reuse of our content and perhaps even more importantly to honor our contracts and obligations with the labels. We simply don’t have the rights to enable every music experience since we don’t own the content that is played through Rhapsody. We do feel strongly – and the market has demonstrated – that it’s possible to create a deep Rhapsody integration that is fully within our terms of use (again, see MOG) and we actively encourage developers to party on our code to create new online music experiences. Our APIs are available from http://webservices.rhapsody.com
Our ultimate goal with Rhapsody is to enable consumers to enjoy more music in more ways than ever before and we’re enthusiastic about pushing the envelope to work with partners to enable great new music experiences.
Ben Rotholtz, General Manager, Web Services & Syndication
well I really like MOG and the MOG team.
but when I play a tune in MOG it fires up the Rhapsody branded player. Totally different UI/UE than MOG.
Was that the problem with YottaMusic. That they used their own player?
What did Yotta need that you guys couldn’t give them? I think that is the confusion here.
Thanks for your help clarifying. this isn’t a witch hunt. I love subscription music. And I want Rhapsody everywhere.
but I just am quite depressed that YottaMusic isn’t alive anymore.
Real has it’s head up it’s ass. Yottamusic had an awesome user interface, social networking built in, and just worked really well! I have used both rhapsody site and yottamusic extensively. Rhapsody’s own site is clunky, slow, and has no social features (what year is this???).
Rhapsody should have bought Yottamusic from Luke and switched out their junk site for his. They’d be way more popular if they did that. I’d be trying to get all my friends on there so I can see what music they are listening too etc. As it is there is no incentive for me to promote rhapsody to my friends.
Someone else is gonna do a subscription model with good social features and blow rhapsody out of the water.
Full rant along with an option for Mac users now that Yotta’s gone found here->
http://www.scrollinondubs.com/.....-rhapsody/
I just switched over to Yahoo Music and so far so good… good riddance Rhapsody.
sean
Ben, are there any plans to tie into recommendation services..for example, ilike integration?
I have used YottaMusic from the very beginning. As Luke Matkins’ father, I cannot begin to say how proud I am of him and his creative programming skills. YottaMusic’s termination makes me rarely listen to my $12.99 per month product that Rhapsody attempts to sell because the interface is so marginal. YottaMusic was a joy to use and much more forward thinking.
If Rhapsody truly loved working with Luke Matkins and his creative, bright and innovative team, why are they not pursuing his product? I wonder why Ben Rotholtz at Rhapsody isn’t calling my son daily to get him to sell this amazing service? Would someone please enlighten me?