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Music Media

Yahoo! Buys Musicmatch 194

Posted by CmdrTaco from the do-you-ehar-what-i-hear dept.
coyotegestalt writes "According to PC World, Yahoo! has just finalized a deal to buy Musicmatch (both its On Demand and download services) for $160 million. More details at IBD. This is a major narrowing of the online music market."
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Yahoo! Buys Musicmatch More

Yahoo! Buys Musicmatch

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  • Second rate! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mekkab ( 133181 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:46PM (#10248598) Homepage Journal
    Great! A second-rate search engine buys a second rate MP3 player! News at 11!

    • Re:Second rate! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by BobPaul ( 710574 ) *
      I know I'm going against the crowd, but has anyone found anything quite as good as MusicMatch's Smart Tagging capability? Winamp finally has a library, but it still doesn't manage music as well as MusicMatch and has no where near the tag-managment capabilities.

      I've seen a couple of products that offer Tags from filenames, but nothing that does tags from file names and directory struture as well as the reverse.

      (WinAmp 5 did actually win me over from MMJB, btw. So the question asked in this post is not rhet
      • I know I'm going against the crowd, but has anyone found anything quite as good as MusicMatch's Smart Tagging capability?

        Musicmatch has had that for years and I am very suprised that none of the other major players have picked it up. That was THE reason that I had musicmatch installed on my machine. I used it to tag downloaded mp3s then winamp to play them.

        The "Tag from internet" (or something like that) was also incredibly useful for getting missing album information such as (album name and date

      • Re:Second rate! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gordgekko ( 574109 )
        I know I'm going against the crowd, but has anyone found anything quite as good as MusicMatch's Smart Tagging capability? Winamp finally has a library, but it still doesn't manage music as well as MusicMatch and has no where near the tag-managment capabilities.

        You aren't alone actually. I switched over completely to WinAmp just because I was tired of MMJB's bloat and speed issues and I miss its great tagging abilities. I haven't found any replacement software that does it as nicely as MMJB did.

      • Re:Second rate! (Score:4, Informative)

        by frankthechicken ( 607647 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:17PM (#10250152) Journal
        Have you tried Foobar 2000 [foobar2000.org](I would recommend the Special Install)?

        It has excellent tagging capabilities, and more than a few useful plug-ins [mbnet.fi].

        Their forum's [hydrogenaudio.org] quite useful as well.

      • Re:Second rate! (Score:4, Informative)

        by 3terrabyte ( 693824 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:38PM (#10250335) Journal
        I may be wrong, because I have only used it on other people's machines, but I think the reason why it has such great internet tagging features is becaues Music Match licenses AllMusic.com's database. You get album art, titles, genre, the whole thing.

        Personally, due to the *ahem* huge amount of mp3's I deal with, I personally tag and rename all my mine manually with Tag & Rename [softpointer.com].

        It connects to CDDB or FreeDB or Allmusic. It takes a little longer than the close-your-eyes and hope MusicMatch is correct, but then I know it's tagged correctly.

      • "I know I'm going against the crowd, but has anyone found anything quite as good as MusicMatch's Smart Tagging capability?"

        Yes, it is called "foobar2000"

        The tagging capabilities in foobar are really second to none!

        And it's an opensourced player too!

    • Re:Second rate! (Score:5, Informative)

      by vijaya_chandra ( 618284 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:00PM (#10248775)
      You might be trying to be funny.
      But Yahoo! doesn't definitely mean just the search engine.
      They do have other good services like mail and messenger. While gmail might have stolen have a big chunk of their email base, their messenger is definitely not sub-par (not that it'd matter much for users of gaim)

      Add things like launch, games, news, groups, geocities, mobile .... and you have a pretty impressive list

      • Yahoo is doing what Interactive (IACI) is trying to achieve - be the one-size-fits all gorilla in the marketplace - Oh did I mention Oracle? Of course, we should remember that the P/E ratios of all these companies, and the granddaddy of inorganic growth, Cisco, are over the norm for the market as a whole. That's a growth stock portfolio for you!

        The objective is to control a slice of many pies that adds up to a tutti-frutti whole (poor taste?) The secondary objective is to be in on the game not through in

    • Re:Second rate! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrklin ( 608689 ) <.ken.lin. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:01PM (#10248783)
      How is Yahoo's search engine sceond rate?

      A little bit late to the game but the Yahoo! Search interface at http://search.yahoo.com/ is almost as clean as Google's.

      Yahoo's search results, supplied by algorithms combined from the once-superior Yahoo, Altavista, and Inktomi, is in my opinion (and many search engine watchers too) just as good as Google's too.

      As for their music acqusition, personaly I use iTunes. I look forward to see what Google does next. Picasa/Hello are pretty good acquisitions.

    • News at 11 (Score:3, Funny)

      by WesG ( 589258 )
      You ready for an awesome knock-knock joke?

      Knock knock?
      Who's there?
      Goo
      Goo who?
      GOOOOOOOOOOOGLE

      But seriously....

    • Re:Second rate! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by michael path ( 94586 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:06PM (#10248836) Homepage Journal
      It's gotten to the point where I've forgotten Yahoo! had a search engine.

      I wouldn't agree about Musicmatch though, their player isn't bad - and I've used it for encoding and playback of much of my collection. My only complaint is that launching is a touch too resource intensive - almost as bad as WMP.

    • Re:Second rate! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by g-doo ( 714869 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:31PM (#10250285)
      How about...a first-rate portal since its founding? It seems that quite a few people scoff at anything that's not Google/Apple/Linux/etc. without much basis. While Yahoo! Search may have lost its number one position a few years ago, it has certainly reworked its search engine to the point where it's comparable to Google's. It's just that many Slashdotters have tried no search engine recently other than Google, so they wouldn't know.

  • Money (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:46PM (#10248601)
    I guess Apple's initial thoughts that online music distribution wouldn't yeild much of a profit hasn't quite shown to be true.

  • Internet Conglomerations? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aldeng ( 804728 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:47PM (#10248617)
    Is it just me, or are all of the internet portals (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) building their own little digital life empires? How long till Google follows suit, or will the even?
    • Don't forget, google bought Picasa not that long ago.

    • Re:Internet Conglomerations? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:50PM (#10248653) Homepage Journal
      Is it just me, or are all of the internet portals (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) building their own little digital life empires?

      I'm surprised it took you this long to notice. The only way you become a mega-corporation is by diversifying across your product lines. The search engines have been in a unique position to do this in the technology world.

      How long till Google follows suit, or will the even?

      You mean they're not? Between the search engine, Froogle, Google Blogs, GMail, Google Groups, Google News, and other features, I'd have thought they'd be on the top of the list for "digital empires".
      • Definitely on point, but you left out Google's orkut - perhaps the 'digital life' feature that keeps them even further ahead of the rest of the pack.

      • Yahoo still trumps Google (Score:5, Interesting)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot AT keirstead DOT org> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:20PM (#10250183)
        While I like Google better as a company, and I like their search, email, and news site sbetter, I sure do wish they had some of the portal features Yahoo has. I mean, with Yahoo! Calender, Yahoo! Addressbook, Yahoo! greetings, Yahoo! Messanger, and Yahoo! Mail, and the seamless integration between them all, Yahoo is basically an online groupware suite.

        I also wish Google news was customizeable like my.yahoo.com - while Google news is more timely and more relevant, many of the topics have no interest to me, and I'd like to be able to insert stock tickers and whatnot. My Yahoo! even lets you plug your own RSS feeds in now.

    • The question now is, what will the effect be on online music consumers? Greater competition is always advantageous for buyers, driving the price down. If the major internet portals are building their own empires - monopolies? Is such a thing possible online? - it seems that the consumers will once again get screwed as our choices decrease and prices increase.
      • The impact will be limited because of the restrictive contracts with the music companies - they hold the power.

        There's not much flexibility on 49-cent and 99-cent items - the business model of Dollar Tree and more.

        The competition might get interesting if one of the online stores decided to specialize in quality indie music - to the extent of introducing a convenient interface that allowed people/indie bands to upload music for free and listeners to listen/purchase/rate music and thereby drive attention

    • Hey you want to know a little tiny secret???

      AOL, MSN, Yahoo Google, all want to control how yuo view content. That whole WWW thing just got in the way. Think about it, if anyone could access everything what would happen??? Free speach, na just no money for the providers.
    • got to battle Billy G...who also has a search engine, on line service, video games, all sort of software interests, etc... oh, and that monopoly on store-bought OSes! They do this to stay alive!!! That was the whole point of the AOL-TW merger as well. AOL has sucky dial-up service, but great marketing and packaging...as well as the user base to MAKE the entertainment industry pay attention. Yahoo needs to do the same thing to stay in the game.

  • Will they merge Launchcast and MM..... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ARRRLovin ( 807926 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:49PM (#10248628)
    so MM knows what you like and will better suit your musical tastes? That would be an interesting data-merge project.

  • Narrows? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LittleVito ( 625033 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:49PM (#10248635) Homepage
    As far as I can tell, Yahoo has an on-line radio service, but not a music services system like MusicMatch. It's not so much narrowing the field as Yahoo was never really in the field to begin with. It's more like moving a player around.

  • Major Narrowing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheGax ( 572856 ) <jeff,meyer&gmail,com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:49PM (#10248636) Homepage
    How exactly does this represent a major narrowing of the online music industry?
    Yahoo didn't have any sort of pay music service that I can think of. Their "Launch" thing is basically just a radio station kind of deal. And MusicMatch doesn't say "online music" to me. They're a late comer in the game. Yahoo probably figures they can enter the game buy snapping up the newest (cheapest) player.
    • It might not say "online music" to you, but their music store currently offers the highest-quality WMA encodings available (last time I checked): 160kbps for $0.99. They're really the only music store I've bought from.
    • I disagree. Yahoo! could've bought Napster (the company formerly known as Roxio) for roughly the same price, based on the latest ROXI market capitalization and stock quote figures. Plus, they already have a co-branded Yahoo!/Napster distribution deal. The reason they didn't? Napster is bleeding red ink. Musicmatch, if I'm not mistaken, has been profitable for over a year (perhaps more). Though, I'm not sure *how* profitable as they're privately held.

      Cheers,
      Doug

  • shocking (Score:4, Interesting)

    by -kertrats- ( 718219 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:49PM (#10248638) Journal
    yet another pointless add-on to clutter up yahoo more...they're reminding me of that new game katamari damacy...

  • why is this in any way important (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:49PM (#10248642)
    Why is this in any way important?

    This means little to most slashdotters. We dont use Yahoo, we all switched to google ages ago. We dont use Musicmatch Jukebox, thats what cdex, winamp, xmms, mplayer, etc is for. Didnt we just go through this a few hours ago with Real's player. We bitch, moan, but we dont even use the services / software anyway. This headline is just about exciting as popular desktop wallpaper site merges with popular desktop icon site.

    I'm wearing slashdot green today.

    • Re:why is this in any way important (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:53PM (#10248690) Homepage
      This means little to most slashdotters. We dont use Yahoo, we all switched to google ages ago.

      Why do people still consider Yahoo! a search engine when it's clearly a web portal and a popular one at that. Can you play Fantasy Football at Google.com? Can you play chess online? Can you watch trailers, listen to music, shop, check your calendar...etc. etc. Google is a great search engine but that's all it is. Yahoo! is a web portal that features a search engine. They're not even in the same game as Google.

      • And I can't say I've ever needed Yahoo to do any of those things. I've checked out a lot of Yahoo stuff, but I've never found any of their offerings to be very compelling or useful.

        http://gameknot.com/
        http://www.apple.com/trail ers/
        http://www.suprnova.org/
        http://www.froogle .com/
        http://www.mozilla.org/
        http://www.horde.o rg/kronolith/

        And...uh...fantasy football? This is *slashdot*.... ...but I'm sure some meathead out there will help me out...
      • Can you play chess online?

        Only on Slashdot would that be a reason to support a portal. :)

      • Sure, I could do tons of stuff on Yahoo. Get driving directions, play games online, read news, check stocks, do email, auctions, personals, movie trailers, but then my bookmarks would all have little yellow "Y!"'s next to them and that's only one step above butterflies and flags on my web browser, instant messenger, email client, and media player and that wreaks of conformity.

        We've got to have tabbed browsing, odd codec playing, grass roots protocol speaking, vi and emacs running, happy little apps with
    • I don't use Yahoo for the search engine. I do use it for the email (occasionally) the mapping & directions (not perfect but usually provides a workable starting point), yellow pages, the occasional news story linked from a forum thread and other things.
      • I don't use Yahoo for the search engine. I do use it for the email (occasionally) the mapping & directions (not perfect but usually provides a workable starting point), yellow pages, the occasional news story linked from a forum thread and other things.

        www.gmail.com [gmail.com]

        local.google.com [google.com]

        news.google.com [google.com]

        And labs.google.com [google.com] if your curious

        And always remember to, run linux, switch friends to firefox, read slashdot, hate the DMCA, support the EFF, drink the GNU koolaid, and profit.

    • This means little to most slashdotters... We dont use Musicmatch Jukebox...

      I have found Musicmatch to be a great little MP3 player with some nice features (Auto-DJ, stay on top, etc.). While I do not use the online portions of the software, I have not found another MP3 player that I like better (iTunes came close but it didn't work with my keyboard buttons). A little while back, I remember Musicmatch was recommended by PC Magazine, and it has a fairly substantial user base. Just because you don't use a

    • This means little to most slashdotters....We dont use Musicmatch Jukebox, thats what cdex, winamp, xmms, mplayer, etc is for.

      You must be new here.

      (Yeah, I see the UID)
    • That's an interesting statement considering Yahoo! is my home page, MusicMatch is my music application of choice, and I have a Slashdot ID that's only five digits long.

      Please don't generalize. Please don't think that Slashdot isn't a varied community of people with different needs and different choices. If you want to be a Linux isolationist then go hang out in #linux on irc and just say "RTFM" to any newbie that comes in with a problem.

      • Looks like you've got 8 digits there, paco.
        • You're looking at the serial number of the post I made, Einstein. A person's registration number is the number directly after their name.

          For instance, you are the 625325th person to register on Slashdot. That number will remain constant on every post you write. The post you made above was the 10,250,236th post made. The next time you post that number will be larger

          Did you really think there were 10.25 million users on Slashdot??

  • Fine, as long as they dontt "Yahoo!" it! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:50PM (#10248646) Homepage
    Well, I PAID for the "lifetime" update subscription for MusicMatch a couple years ago, and have been very happy withe the app. Unfortunatly, Yahoo! is notorious for filling its pages (mail, groups, etc.) with huge, obnoxious ads--even on paid eamil accounts. So if Yahoo! junks up MusicMatch with its typical ads like their other online services, I'll dump it in a heartbeat.

    MusicMatch has been a lean, mean app that has worked on systems that WinAmp couldn't. If Yahoo mucks this one up, I'll be really pissed.

  • Narrowing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LowneWulf ( 210110 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:50PM (#10248650)
    Does Yahoo own other online music shops already? Otherwise, how is this narrowing the market?

  • Branching out (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [nosrednehevets]> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:51PM (#10248658)
    Does anyone think that this is Yahoo's way of not putting all their eggs in one basket since they are losing search engine "marketshare" to Google?

    This might re-invigorate Musicmatch if Yahoo decides to roll out the Marketing Machine.

    • Re:Branching out (Score:3, Informative)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) *
      Yahoo always has been in the business of branching out and becoming a "web portal" rather than a search engine. That's why they've got e-mail, fanatasy football games, a music news site, an IM client, and all sorts of other things in their brand image.

      It's Google who always stayed as a search engine only and is making newsworthy branch out efforts in the form of GMail and such.
      • Yes, you are right - I meant to ask if they are trying to get their hands in as many things as possible due to the fact they are losing out to competitors in a lot of categories - especially as Google branches out. Sorry for being unclear...
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Slashdot summary wrong yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:52PM (#10248678)
    This is a major narrowing of the online music market.

    Excuse me? I don't see any "Yahoo! Music Download" service folding up. "Launch Music on Yahoo" is a music news site, now likely to see its brand image tied closer to the MusicMatch music delivery service.

    Yahoo!'s favorite music delivery service at this point according to the launch.yahoo.com page appears to be going out and buying the CD the old fashioned way at Target.

  • Pre-installed crap (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bubbaprog ( 783125 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:53PM (#10248686)
    Has anyone noticed how impossible this stuff is to remove from a new Dell computer? Hopefully Yahoo! does something about this bloated piece of ubiquitous spyware.
    • That's why you should go for the n series [dell.com] and save yourself a whole lot of hassle to start with. I just installed 20 of these things and they work great.

      One thing to note, however, is that you should REALLY get the $20 Dell floppy add on. They don't come with a standard floppy mount or faceplate, and I had to fabricate 20 ugly metal kluges while simultaneously defacing my pricewatch special FDD's.

      -theGreater nSeries Fan.

  • Funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [nosrednehevets]> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:53PM (#10248689)
    Funny how now you can use a company's search engine to crack [yahoo.com] a piece of its software!

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:53PM (#10248693)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Not Dell.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fenceman ( 710905 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:55PM (#10248709) Homepage
    And I thought for sure that Dell would have been the one to buy up MusicMatch. Oh well, as long as Yahoo can keep up the high quality that I've become accustomed to with MM, I'll be happy--not likely given their history though :(

  • been a while since I tried musicmatch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John_Allen_Mohammed ( 811050 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:56PM (#10248725)
    but the last time I did, it just skipped over all 37,000 of my music files because it didn't support .ogg. Any change since then or is it still crippleware ?
  • You knew they had to do it eventually, the question always was, "Which music-providing company is it going to be?" Now we know.

  • blah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tirinal ( 667204 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @01:59PM (#10248757)
    This is a major narrowing of the online music market.

    Not really. For all practical intents and purposes, Apple has the online music market under its thumb. Barring some very unYahoo-like innovation, the consequences of this sale will likely be nothing more than surface ripples.

  • does this mean... (Score:3, Funny)

    by m2bord ( 781676 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:03PM (#10248808) Homepage Journal
    that we have to listen to the Yahoo! yodel after every 4 mp3's?

  • trendsetters (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:04PM (#10248814) Homepage Journal
    When Yahoo bought Broadcast.com at the height of the dotcom equity inflation in 1998, the purchase price was divided by the number of songs in which Yahoo thereby owned the copyright. That was the basis for the RIAA agreement, now law, pricing online performances of each song at $0.000,7 each listen. Of course the performance fees are collected in cash, while the Yahoo/Broadcast.com deal was in inflated stock, so the cost of publishing is prohibitive for all but corporate "official" publishers.

    The new deal for MusicMatch should provide a new calculus for the "market price per song". How many performances has Yahoo purchased, for how much money? After the math dust has settled, what's the price per listen?

  • Not sure the summary makes sense... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by inkdesign ( 7389 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:06PM (#10248838)
    How is this a "major narrowing of the online music market" when all the same players still exist, new stores open left and right, and one simply has a new owner?

  • God Bless (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g0bshiTe ( 596213 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:17PM (#10248934)
    ./xmms
  • I have wondered for some time if one of these companies wouldn't integrate an instant messenger product with a music product. I would like to text friends from my iPod. Not that I have an iPod, or friends with text capability, but still, it seems plausible that Yahoo wants to make MusicMatch Jukebox a part of their IM client.

  • Musicmatch.com history (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sabaki ( 531686 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:21PM (#10248987)
    Neat, it's almost like I've been bought by Yahoo.

    Back in the day, my company (Creative Multimedia Corporation, long since gone the way of the dodo), created MusicMatch.com, MovieMatch.com, HealthExplorer.com, the original Dr. Ruth's website. Among others. I was webmaster for most of these. Oh, the glory days.

    When CMC started to fold, we sold off MusicMatch.com and the logo to a little company then called Brava software. I remember transferring and renaming their entire library (20 songs or so) with a shell script. It didn't seem like a good business model, because who would buy these huge music files from them?

    But I guess they made it work well enough to get bought.
  • How is this a narrowing? Yahoo! doesn't currently offer any music stores or MP3 players, does it?

    So how in the world is this a "narrowing?"

  • MusicMatch has as many bells and whistles of incentives for you to upgrade. Heaven forbid you accidentally click on an MP3 with it being associated to MM. You can't close it out cleanly without it reminding you(again) to upgrade to pro.

    They seem to update the software every other week with it reminding you to upgrade to the latest version(not pro, just the latest free version).

  • Linux Port? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krgallagher ( 743575 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:32PM (#10249107) Homepage
    I used to subscribe to Musicmatch Platinum. I thought it was an incredible service! I especially liked the artist match and on demand services. I have a varied (some say warped) taste in music. Musicmatch did an incredible job of using my existing mp3 collection to target online music to my tastes.

    During the two years I was a subscriber, my only complaint was that there was no Linux option. I filled out surveys and finally even complained to customer support. The response I recieved from customer support was that codec licensing agreements prevented them from releasing a Linux port.

    Even so I continued to subscribe until I switched to my current job where they do not allow me to listen to online music at work (the main place I use windows as an OS.)

    If Yahoo is able to bring out a Linux port of the online service, I will immediately become a subscriber again.

  • The blind continue to lead the blind (Score:4, Interesting)

    by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @02:54PM (#10249322)
    I admit I'm an Apple fanatic, but the attempts I've seen thus far at competing with iTunes has been almost funny to watch (almost funny--except I know there are lots of people behind these efforts doing a sincere job.) I can't even begin to imagine how anyone is going to compete, even MS who lacks the iPod factor here. I just hope Apple doesn't get cocky about it because someone somewhere will figure out an angle on it at some point.

    But anyway, Yahoo, who has no track record in this regard is buying MusicMatch who has no substantial track record to really speak of. Here's my predictions:

    Netscape will by this then they will be bought out by Real who will be bought out by SCO who will be bought out by Wal-Mart who will then dump the whole music thing because the RIAA won't sell tracks for 38 cents.

  • Industry consolidation is somewhat healthy (for consumers) in this instance. Apple, MSFT and Real have some traction - it's good (for consumers) for those corps. to have competition. MusicMatch now has more muscle behind it -

    w/r/t Yahoo, they've always considered themselves more "directory" than search engine. They're a portal play, and a good one at that. Perhaps they're no longer as in favor with the slashdot crowd as they might have been, but - through Fantasy Football, a great spam account, and other

  • I already love Launch cast because of the "my station" feature. Maybe this merger will mean that when I hear a song I can download it for a small fee. That'd be great!

  • media distribution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tofu2go ( 727555 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:51PM (#10250425)
    Yahoo isn't just a portal/search engine company. their intent is to become an internet media distribution company (Launch and its recent integration with Messenger comes to mind). Semel's background and talent was in Media Distribution, so buying up musicmatch and adding music distribution to their stable of products is an obvious move.

    Musicmatch may not be a big player on the lines of iTunes, but they certainly have an established brand name that Yahoo could take advantage of. and their jukebox player is quite popular, so if they can figure out how to lure more users into the integrated store, that's only a click away in the jukebox player, it could be a success.

  • What a waste.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gentlewhisper ( 759800 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:06PM (#10251010)
    Roland: It's a waste. A goddamn waste.

    I really think Yahoo should concentrate on what they have now instead of trying to expend effort into YET more areas.

    Lets see what 'good' yahoo has.
    -yahoo auctions? who cares?
    -yahoo mail? with gmail now?
    -yahoo groups? well, that's good to some extent..
    -yahoo's search engine? bleigh, that sucks without google's backend.
    -yahoo's portal? you really like that shebang?

    Maybe 160mil is spare change to yahoo now, but if they don't establish a core competency, they will probably become irrelevant very soon!
    • yahoo groups? The interface sucks very badly.
      But you forgot yahoo games.

      Literati! Euchre! and all sort of other fun games... and it is all linked to your yahoo profile.

      Also, Yahoo IM and Yahoo Chat are nice, and all linked up.

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