Yahoo Introduces Competitor for iTunes 819
LadyDeath writes "After a year in development, Yahoo has launched its competitor to Apple's iTunes and Napster To Go, a subscription and download music service priced at only $4.99 per month. Tracks are offered in 192Kbps WMA, and can be transferred to portable devices. Perhaps most interesting to the Slashdot crowd is that the Yahoo! Music Engine is built on an open platform that facilitates plug-ins - both DLL and Web based. Podcasting and video playback plug-ins are already available." Update: 05/11 13:06 GMT by T : ian c rogers, formerly of Nullsoft, just led the build of the media player, and writes with information about "the the plugin architecture it supports as well as some of the 20 plugins that are already available for it.
I've posted my thoughts on why someone should or shouldn't use the Yahoo! Music Engine on my blog."
interesting (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Oh good, yet another (Score:5, Interesting)
But in the other hand, I wonder if they could go with a hybrid service - DRM only what has to be DRM'd, release the rest as "open". (even if that "only" was to mean 80% of their catalogue)
Re:Oh good, yet another (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously, I realise the DRM would be cracked in minutes, and we would all have perfect copies of tracks we could do what we liked with, but don't tell me this has occured to the *AAs!?
I thought MP3 *is* supported (Score:3, Interesting)
WMA or WMA? (Score:2, Interesting)
It must be the same for millions of similar devices out there in the "real" world. Imagine 70-90% of clueless first time Yahoo music users trying to figure out why their US$ 60 subscription downloaded WMA files just don't work at all....
I just hope they outsourced the helpdesk support because it will get busy.
paying to not own the music (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Call me crazy, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
this is the biggest load of BS ever. please explain yourself. why can't other people support mp3 constant, mp3 variable, AAC, wav etc. ?
the only thing that you can be sure of is that if you have DRM WMV the only people legally using your service are Windows users. seems like yahoo is the one denying support from people.
Not buy! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh good, yet another (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea is that you get all the data encrypted. You can copy, share, spread, mangle, edit it, whatever - it's useless like that anyway. When you want to play it on a DRM-based device, you must first connect to a key server. Your device identifies itself, a secure handshake is performed (man in the middle won't help much, public keys of the device and the server have been exchanged at the manufacture time), then receives the key to decrypt the song, so it can be played. Of course the key may include additional instructions like limit, so you can play it within next 10h and then it should be disabled, or you can play it once only (pay per view), or such, and the device must obey them (otherwise it wouldn't be DRM-approved). In software you should be able to intercept the key, then bundling it with the song, or releasing it decrypted you could keep copying it. For embedded devices it's much harder because you won't be able to authenticate as the keyserver or the device and the key is transferred by secure means. All you can do is to re-encode the analog output, i.e the video or audio that is being sent to screen/speakers. With obvious quality loss. Anyway, still, to obtain the key you must "purchase" it by some legal means, i.e. the DRM'd song contains unique ID with a flag "paid", then you get the key and the ID is removed from the "paid" list so when the key expires for some reason (i.e. pay per view), you need to pay again. Also, someone else with a copy of your song won't get the same key again without paying again...
No thanks. I don't want to lease my music. (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from a non-compatible format, I can't stand the thought of all my music going away if I don't want to subscribe anymore. Yes, I can then decide to buy the music but then you're faced with "Okay, I want to stop my subscription and keep these 50 albums but I don't have $500 to lay out right now." Then what? Live without the music or take out a loan.
As a consumer of iTunes music, I am seriously considering going back to CD's so I get the full audio quality, the artwork and I can do whatever I want with it (i.e. send an mp3 to a friend 'hey, check these guys out - you might like them', etc.). While the iTunes DRM is fairly non-intrusive, I'm disliking DRM in any form more and more. I want my music for the long term. I want my kids to be able to play it 20 years from now if they want. I have zero guarantee of being able to do that with my iTunes DRMed music.
Subscription-based services practically guarantee I won't be able to do any of those things.
Who funds these things? (Score:5, Interesting)
With Apple's model, there's no dependence on Apple's success for your music to play. You don't even have to depend on any specific hardware because you can burn it all to CD. $5 a month for the rest of my life for a huge library of music is an awesome deal. $5 a month for that library until the service folds and I'm left with no music isn't all that attractive.
Someone needs to point me to the venture capital firms that back things things (except in Yahoo's case). I have an idea for a company. I think I'm going to call it Webvan.
Re:No thanks. I don't want to lease my music. (Score:3, Interesting)
DRM is the future, you can't stop it. Your children in 20 years won't be able to buy plain old music CDs anymore because the RIAA won't release it unsecured like that. If they still sell physical media, they'll have changed the format over to something DRM'd.
Re:Won't play on my MP3 players (Score:3, Interesting)
So What! Nothing has really changed. (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Rhaposody, iTunes, Yahoo, etc, etc, They all use the exact, Third Party Database.
2. They are all 192 kbps WMA format. Poor quality and codec for the cost.
3. Why pay $0.79 - $0.99 for a single song. 1 min, 3 mins, is that really fair? Buying the CD only saves maybe $5 bucks. All at the cost of not getting art work, a cover, and half a lossly compression quality with a microsoft codec.
- That's why I prefer allofmp3.com.
1. They are a different database.
2. They supoort all formats for most songs:
codecs (Flac, Ogg, wma, mp3)
bitrate (full, static, variable, 256, 192, any)
3. You pay per megabyte, $0.02/mb to be exact. Much more fair. A full, lossless compression, no audio lossed song may cost around $1.00. Where a lesser quality song will be much much less, $0.04 - $1.00. I pay for the quality I want. Now I can get the full quality song minus the art, cover, case, and cd, for about a $5 savings. That's fair.
It's all about convienience (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are willing to wait instead of the "I need it NOW" mentality, you can save yourself a ton of money and have music without DRM and at a better quality.
BUT...if you HAVE to have it NOW...then you have to put up with all of the BS that music download services shove...unless allofmp3.com has a flac version of what you need.....
Potential vs Actual (Score:3, Interesting)
You make a very valid point, but why is the potential for Apple computers 100% when the potential for Yahoo is 20%?
Obviously I understand that the Apple iPod accounts for nearly 80% of the market that Yahoo is entering, but IBM compatibles account for much more than that in the market Apple computer competes.
Just as I would never consider a WMA based MP3 player at this time (I love my ipod, what can I say?) I would also never consider buying a mac. I only buy computers in part form, something Apple doesn't really facilitate.
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Re:Yahoo vs. Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yahoo made $205 million net profit for q1 2005, [bbc.co.uk] and "excluding the fees that Yahoo pays to its advertising partners, revenues grew to $821m, up from $550m a year earlier."
Apple made $295 million net profit for q1 2005, [bbc.co.uk] and "saw sales of $3.49bn, compared to $2bn a year ago, a 75% increase," "the highest quarterly figures in its history and ahead of Wall Street expectations."
Apple is also a debt-free company, [apple.com] and has been since last year.Based on that, I'd say Apple is much more profitable, has more market capitalization, and is in much more solid financial standing than Yahoo, but then again what do I know? I'm just quoting facts.
Re:So What! Nothing has really changed. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:DRM (Score:2, Interesting)
Another bonus of the subscription service: when they add a thousand more CDs to the catalog, you don't pay anything more than that 5 bucks a month, and boom, you have access to all of them. Every time they add another 100 CDs to the library, it's like you got them for free.
Who cares if it's DRM'd, as long as you can listen to what you want when you want. The only major downside of DRM, if it's unobtrusive enough, is that you can't give away the music to others. But big deal - anyone not willing to shell out a measly 5 bucks a month doesn't really like music anyway.
And while the music is lossy, 192k WMA is like 384k MP3 - which doesn't even exist, since 320k is the maximum quality (at least on any software I know of). Whatever loss there may be isn't going to be discernible by 99 percent of the human race. The other 1 percent, if they're that picky, can always buy CDs, sacrificing library size for an infintesimal increase in audio quality.
I think this is really a fantastic deal. I would not be shocked if this takes off big-time, with a side effect being an increasingly substantial dent in iPod market share since those stuck with iPods won't be able to get this deal. On the other hand, the iPod folks can keep shelling out a buck a song from iTunes and there's nothing wrong with that. After all, Steve Jobs needs a new Porsche every couple of years.
I have not yet bought a portable music player; I've been holding out for one with 100+ gigs of storage, and there aren't any out there. But when there is, I will make sure that it works with this Yahoo service. If that rules out Apple making any money from my expenditure, well, that's their problem, not mine.
You really shouldn't have to log into Yahoo... (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, I don't care if people label me a karma whore, and I'm in the "I own a Mac [you insensitive clod]!" segment of "Reasons why not to use Y! media player" below. I highly doubt Yahoo! could duplicate the existing ease-of-use between applications on the Apple platform anyway and still have it be worth their time and money.
Also, while iTunes was an obvious, admitted ploy to sell Apple hardware... it did work, didn't it? :-)
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While Yahoo! embarks on a proper marketing and PR campaign (shouts out to Liz and Charlene), I thought I'd give you (friends, family, fellow geeks) the real story, human to human, on why you should (or shouldn't) use the new Yahoo! Music Engine.
FWIW, my name is Ian Rogers. I used to work with Beastie Boys, for their record label Grand Royal, at Nullsoft (where Justin and Tom made Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Gnutella), and most recently had a very small company called Mediacode with my main man Rob Lord (who started IUMA and brought Nullsoft up with Justin). We sold Mediacode to Yahoo! in Dec 2003 and Y! has had us in a cave ever since building the Yahoo! Music Engine and some other stuff we can't tell you about yet.
But down to the reason you're reading this. I'm asking you to ditch Windows Media Player (aka WiMP, sorry John, Mark), Winamp (pour out a little liquor), iTunes (sorry Chris and Steve G), MusicMatch (apologies to my new brothers and sisters), Rhapsody (you were my first for-pay love, ya tramp), and Napster (THROW ANOTHER STACK OF BENJAMINS ON THE FIRE!), and use Yahoo! Music Engine instead. (If you're using Foobar2000, keep on, brother man, I ain't going to war with y'all purists.)
Here's why you should switch to the Yahoo! Music Engine:
For the Friends/Family:
* PRICE! $5/month subscription service with subscription downloads (transfer your downloads to your subscription-capable device). Yes, this is the same set of features that Napster is charging you $15 for. This is what they call an "introductory price", kids. Buy a year now. I'm not kidding. It ain't going any lower than this, maybe ever. Buy now or regret missing out on the cheapest year of (legal) all-you-can-eat music ever in your life.
* Personalization! I dunno about you, but ALL the other music services and stores seem incapable of showing me music I actually want without me searching for it. Our pages are PERSONALIZED TO YOUR MUSIC TASTE. The front page for me at the moment contains The Fall, Muddy Waters, Stevie Wonder, Television, and Clikatat Ikatowi. If you know me, you know they're doing pretty damn good.
* CHOICE! If you don't like the idea of subscribing to your music, you can rip CDs, play downloaded music, or even spend $0.99/track if you'd like. Whatever your preference, we make it work. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING TO HAVE FUN WITH OUR PLAYER.
* Community! AOL has the most popular instant message program and not one of their 500 media apps takes advantage of it! LAMERS! Ours allows you to LISTEN TO MUSIC FROM YOUR FRIENDS via Yahoo! Messenger! LEGALLY! YOU HEARD ME! Also, you can find users with tastes similar to you, view their collections, instant message them, whateva. Rad.
* iPod support!Kinda! We support the iPod to the extent that Apple will let us -- which means we support transfer of non-DRM tracks (your ripped and "imported" content) to the iPod.
* Huge catalog of the highest quality files of any paid service. Our subscription service and download store spits out dual-pass 192kbps WMA files. They sound hearty, even in my living room. And, there's LOTS of them. Music everywhere I turn. From mainstream to obscure. 1M tracks and counting. Shatner! Fela! The Germs!
* Free, fast, MP3 (even high bitrates), AAC, Ogg, and FLAC encoding. We support the widest variety o
1Million songs + Plug-in Architechure (Score:3, Interesting)
1) How long till some industrious chap writes a plug-in that will strip the DRM, convert to AAC and sync it with an iPod?
2) How soon can Apple make an iPod that holds Yahoo's 1 Million songs?
Subscription? Bah! (Score:3, Interesting)
-99 cents to own a song for, essentially, forever...
-or $5 a month to rent it for, essentially, forever...
I've got enough monthly bills without adding one more to the mix, thanks. I don't need WMA's music rental model, at any price.
What did you think when you tried the product? (Score:2, Interesting)
How's the personalization working for you?
What do you think of the feature where you can browse music from friends and members with similar music tastes?
Have you tried the smart shuffling feature?
What do you think of how the service shows you what's already "in My Music" while you browse around it?
What do you think of the similarities explorers? How about the user profiles?
How about plugins?
What bugs are you finding in the beta?
What new feature ideas do you have for this sort of service?
http://music.yahoo.com/musicengine [yahoo.com]
Re:Bandwagon, much? (Score:3, Interesting)
No they won't. They'll still go to their local record store and maintain the probably years-long relationship they've had with the folks running the store. They'll buy the CD or vinyl, rip it, and store the originals somewhere immaculate. Don't you know anything about real music freaks? The idea of not owning a track is abhorrent to them, and lossless compression is the devil only to be tolerated on low end equipment such as an iPod (and even then, there's always Apple Lossless).
Re:DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no possible way that Yahoo can maintain this price point long-term without subsidizing it.
No it doesn't cut the mustard. (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally I called the CC company and asked them. The nice lady said it sounded like a defective product, she asked if the company I bought it from refused to take care of it. I said yes, she said no problem and struck the charges from my bill.
I downloaded iTunes I ( i don't have an iPod) bought my 3 songs.... and there's a big ole burn CD button on the right top of itunes app!!!! I burned my CD and guess what 1 week later I can play my songs in iTunes, I can play my CD... I know iTunes is DRM'd, but it works as opposed to the Crappy MS wma files with thier server resident codecs.
I'm sure M$ will get thier stuff working correctly in a couple of years, after they have more closely ripped of Apple (as usual). But I like iTunes because it works the way it's advertised. When will companies learn that.
Am I the only one that actually read (Score:4, Interesting)
You can buy a burnable copy that is a non-drm'd format that can be transferred to an IPod or anywhere else (a copy you can keep on your hard drive) for 99 cents. If you have the subscription it's 79 cents.
Yahoo, Napster, whatever. Do they work on a Mac? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Well, I also own several G4 Power Macs running OS X. If you've ever used WMP on a Mac, you'll know it performs horribly. Even if it's the only thing running. I can imagine how WMA files will. On my linux boxes, I don't have a supported option. no iTMS, no nothing.
Yahoo's music service doesn't support my OS of choice. Now, should I bitch and complain that they need to "open" it up? Or, am I served just as well by iTMS (the devil I know) and can realize, that they are somply catering to the majority?
Yahoo's requirements:
*
Yahoo! Music Engine Software
*
Microsoft Windows XP or 2000
*
Internet Explorer 6.0+
*
Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
*
Pentium III 300 MHz processor (WMP for Mac can't even RUN on a 300 MHZ Mac...hell a 600 MHz G4)
*
128MB Ram
*
Broadband connection for streaming and buying music
*
Latest Windows Service Packs
Napster's requirements:
PC only, Napster To Go-compatible player, Windows XP, Windows Media Player 10, Internet connectivity.
So regardless, I'm locked out.
All the railing I've seen in this thread about DRM, about choice, about how easy it is to license WMA... it's does not run/work well on a Mac. it does not run/work at all on linux. It also is not supported via these music stores on the Mac. They don't have a snazzy little front end. So isn't all the bitching about Apple's DRM not providing choice BS? You don't get choice of any other OS with Yahoo or Napster, so if I did have a Rio (which I do, but dont use anymore), I'm still a Mac user, so I'm locked out.
Apple provides that interface for it's own OS (remember iTunes and by default iPods were Mac only for awhile) as well as Windows and I PRAY for Linux soon. So yeah, I have to live with thier DRM, but at least they service my need. To the others Mac users don't exist.