Yahoo! Music Unlimited

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Launched on May 11, 2005, Yahoo! Music Unlimited is an on-demand online music service provided by Yahoo!, Inc. Users paying a fee can access a library of over two million songs and, at an extra cost, add a "To Go" feature which allows the transfer of downloaded songs to a compatible digital audio player.

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[edit] Billing

Yahoo! offers two billing options: $8.99 monthly, or $71.88 billed annually (calculated to $5.99 per month). To transfer downloaded music to a compatible portable music player, an additional $6 per month is added to both plans. Unfortunately, the subscription services are only available for users living in the USA or Canada and it requires a credit card (no other billing method being accepted).

Before November 1, 2005, the To Go feature was included at no extra charge. However, experts believe that this was done in order for Yahoo! to promote their service.

[edit] Features

Users who subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited are able to stream and download an unlimited number of music tracks, but Janus DRM (digital rights management) technology prevents these tracks from being accessed once a user's subscription is discontinued or expires. Thus, if a user wishes to download and own a music track, they must pay an additional fee. Still, however, digital rights management prevents a user from freely distributing these tracks.

Users living outside the USA or Canada can still download the player and enjoy the features of the Yahoo! Music Engine, a software product that basically functions as a music collection organizer in a similar fashion to that of iTunes.

Yahoo! tech support has reported that Windows Media Audio codec, similar to MP3, is used at 192 kbit/s for all songs. This is a high-quality encoding and without high-end playback equipment, nearly indistinguishable from CD.

One distinguishing feature of Yahoo! Music Unlimited is that users can not simply browse Yahoo!'s music catalog. Rather, Yahoo! makes suggestions based on each user's preference. This differs from competing services such as Rhapsody, Napster and URGE which allow users to browse music by categories such as genre or artist.

[edit] Similar Services

Napster To Go and Rhapsody Unlimited, provided by Napster and RealNetworks respectively, are both similar to Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Subscription fees to these services are slightly higher. Yahoo also offers Musicmatch On Demand, a streaming music subscription service available through the Musicmatch Jukebox client.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

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