Yahoo Music

Products

Yahoo Music Radio

In June 2001, after the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Yahoo acquired LAUNCH Media, which was facing financial difficulty, for $12 million. In addition to a website with music news and videos, it provided an Internet radio service that allowed users to create personalized Internet radio stations by rating songs selected by a recommender system. Users were also able to listen to music from 150 preset Internet radio stations. The service offered both an advertising supported free version and a subscription fee-based premium version. At the time of the acquisition by Yahoo, the service had 7.4 million users.

In December 2008, the service was integrated into CBS Radio due to a rise in royalty rates, with CBS taking full control of the service, including advertising and sales and adding compatibility with Firefox and Safari.

The service was integrated with iHeartRadio in June 2012, providing listeners exclusive access to music events such as the iHeartRadio Music Festival. The service was shut down in early 2014 without any announcement.

Musicmatch Jukebox

Musicmatch was a media player software that also operated an internet radio service, which allowed users choose the artist they want to listen to but not the song. MusicMatch Jukebox was launched in 1997 and was bundled with the iPod Classic as its music manager until the introduction of iTunes for Microsoft Windows in 2003. In September 2003, the company launched a digital music store with 200,000 songs available. It had a partnership with Dell to promote the service and software.

On September 14, 2004, Yahoo acquired Musicmatch Jukebox for $160 million. However, the service was not integrated well, instead stagnating. It was shut down on August 31, 2007.

Yahoo Music Unlimited

In May 2005, Yahoo Music launched Yahoo Music Unlimited, a music streaming service and digital music store. Users paid a subscription fee to access a library of over two million songs which could be either streamed or downloaded as DRM-protected Windows Media Audio files and played from a computer in near CD quality sound. Subscribers could also download songs for transfer to CD or supported portable devices with an additional per-song payment. Yahoo Music Jukebox was the software used for the service. The service required an active Internet connection. It was discontinued on September 30, 2008. The service was praised for its music quality, interface, and cheaper price than competitors.

Yahoo Music Jukebox

Music streaming service Online radio Yahoo Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo Music Engine, was a freeware media player software released by Yahoo in 2005 to compete with iTunes and Rhapsody in the digital music market.

References

References

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