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February 3, 2008

Yahoo To Shut Premium Music Service, Redirect Users To Rhapsody…For Now

Duncan Riley

23 comments »

Yahoo will shut its premium music service tomorrow, a move away from premium music sales we first reported on in September 2007, and instead redirect users to Real Networks’ Rhapsody service. Terms of the deal are not yet available.

According to an AP report, subscribers to Yahoo Music Unlimited will be shifted to the Rhapsody service in the first half of this year with Yahoo subscribers’ music library and payment plans remaining the same for only a limited time after the switch. Yahoo Music Unlimited plans came in at between $5.99/ month and $8.99 /month, compared to Rhapsody’s $12.99/ month charge.

The move alone is part of the further consolidation in the online music marketplace as more companies abandon standalone efforts in favor of partnerships as Apple’s iTunes continues to dominate the online music marketplace. The move itself may be short term with Yahoo users likely to be forwarded to the Zune marketplace if Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo is successful.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. YDRIVE

    February 3rd, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    Actually showing that a convenient device access to the end-users is important, like eg., the iPod.

  2. Joke Cricket

    February 4th, 2008 at 12:20 am

    It seems Real is buying Yahoo, not Microsoft..:)

  3. Jeff

    February 4th, 2008 at 12:38 am

    things may change once microsft come in, yahoo music could give apple a run for its money

    How do you rate? Check out http://www.yupnup.com

    http://www.yupnup.com

  4. newssweb

    February 4th, 2008 at 12:50 am

    I Pray , I pray

    that Yahoo Guys would open their eyes, and prevent a Microsoft deal. Instead a partnership with Google! Cause Yahoo is History, Yahoo was the first to be, Yahoo is my email since 1997, yahoo is my first destination on the web. I just hope that this habit of mine wouldn’t change and that I stay a yahoologan and not a yahoolivan

  5. Jurado

    February 4th, 2008 at 5:49 am

    Brilliant MS Zune move….Game On! Although I love iTunes, this move positions MS to wrestle content from iTunes….

  6. Paul

    February 4th, 2008 at 6:21 am

    This move is perfectly timed to to summarize Yahoo’s overall failure.

    Yahoo put some big money into the launch of this service, and I was one of the many who were enthusiastic to sign up. But Yahoo wouldn’t let me at first. I’d mis-placed the ridiculous Yahoo wallet secret code, and the only way to get it back was to tell Yahoo what birth date I’d used when I signed up with them around 1996. Calls to tech support (they were answering then at least) were to no avail - that Yahoo wallet was unrecoverable.

    I downloaded their music client software after creating a new wallet with a new Yahoo account. The client wouldn’t load. Then it did load, but it kept spawning new versions of itself forever, requiring a mechanical reset to regain control of the machine. Tried it on other machines. Same thing.

    When I tried to cancel the service to avoid an unending chain of $6/month credit card charges, it turned out there was no way to do this on Yahoo’s site. Anywhere. And no support options to let you contact one of the few services you could pay Yahoo for.

    In 2 days Yahoo showed a core payment service designed to kick out users, a rare fee-based product that combined poor design with ineffective QA, and a general impression that the company lacked adult supervision. They have more dedicated users than anyone, and they couldn’t make this work.

    Yahoo has been run by morons for years now. That anyone still cares at all about them is only testament to their early genius.

  7. salary Xpert

    February 4th, 2008 at 7:19 am

    @4: how could they? if they give an offer for the shareholders 60+% over the stock price, and the shareholders sell their shares, what could they do?

  8. Ted

    February 4th, 2008 at 7:24 am

    Curiously, no mention at all about this on Yahoo Music’s site http://music.yahoo.com/ymu/, and as a paying subscriber, I’ve received no email from Yahoo to explain that they are shutting down this service. You’d think they’d post something rather than continue to encourage people to sign up.

  9. Rajiv Dingra

    February 4th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    Wow on one end they shut something on other end they acquire.. I guess Yahoo has been quite upfront in shutting its non performing assets just like google did with google answers. I guess microsoft can take a leaf out of yahoo’s book after the acquisition and work towards shutting msn! :D

  10. Jim

    February 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    What will the impact be to the Sansa Connect device/service that is customized to access the Yahoo Music Unlimited service via WiFi…

    Anyone know anything?

  11. jro

    February 4th, 2008 at 10:28 am

    Duncan - any info about the number of subscribers for Yahoo Music?

  12. Justin

    February 4th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    Also, what about yearly subscribers?

    I signed up for YahooMusic with their Mastercard offer (buy one year in advance, get second year free).

    Like others, I’m confused why no e-mail has been sent or notice posted to paying subscribers.

    This is going to be a pain in the rear to sort out.

  13. jb

    February 4th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    That’s too bad. I know their music service gets hated on at Tech Crunch… but I am a paying subscriber and LOVE the service. So this sucks.

  14. David Fox

    February 4th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    Hooray. Yahoo Music was (at least for me) slow and buggy. Much better selection at Rhapsody. Now…I wonder what happens with my ‘integrated’ Sansa Connect player?

  15. Adam Wexler

    February 4th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Have never really taken much time to study Yahoo’s Music offerings, but how does their current catalogue compare to Rhapsody? Also, why would someone want to pay MORE to get unlimited access…i thought we were moving in the other pricing direction…

  16. Still Rob G

    February 4th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    I don’t think paying more for unlimited access is going to entice anyone these days with imeem, deezer, spiralfrog and now last.fm offering some sort of free service. Now people might pay for the right to download (assuming that download isn’t on spiralfrog or qtrax ;-) that’s certainly a possibility.

    Of course this whole ad supported thing may just be a short term experiment, the labels might decide to terminate agreements, or the companys might just discover the whole thing is not going to break even. I wouldn’t be surprised if spiralfrog and qtrax just give up because deals structured around downloads cost more.

    I see the streaming only services - imeem, deezer and last.fm have a real chance to build a sustainable ad supported model. Although I also think that deezer will have to negotiate some new deals or find itself shut down.

    To be honest I see only imeem and last.fm making the ad supported music model work in the long term. but as long as one of them does then the premium subscription will be a hard sell.

  17. Earl Myatt

    February 5th, 2008 at 6:39 am

    What about those of us who paid for the lifetime support option on MMJB when we bought it before Yahoo bought MusicMatch? Do we get any kind of return for our guarentee. My lifetime has not expired.

  18. Rob

    February 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    I just saw this article today (Feb 5, 2008), and I’m using Yahoo Music Unlimited right now. Radio, downloaded tracks, and streaming tracks all work fine.

    I also never heard anything from Yahoo saying they were shutting down the service.

  19. Chris

    February 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Rob - Are these not official enough for you?

    http://ycorpblog.com/2008/02/0.....he-masses/
    http://www.realnetworks.com/co.....73265.html

  20. Stu

    February 6th, 2008 at 7:48 am

    My old MusicMatch program used to look up MP3 tags via Gracenote. Once Yahoo released their own upgraded version of MM, I had to upgrade to get this feature back. Now that Y!M seems to have gone kaput, does anyone know what other players have this feature ??? It makes ripping my home CD’s much easier without all of the typing. I don’t feel like having to pay for another player when I have a perfectly good one now.

    Soon there will be one company and one country for all. Will it be Microsoft (Hillary) or Google (Obama)?

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