Were you one of the
suckers consumers who bought music from the old Yahoo! Music store, which
shut down in February? Well, Yahoo! would like to invite you to repurchase your music via its
new partner Rhapsody, as the company is going to stop providing new DRM keys—which would allow users to move their music from one computer or another, or revive tracks that were "frozen"—come Sept. 30. Well, at least the Rhapsody tracks don't have any DRM, and therefore won't be subject to these sorts of corporate maneuverings... [
Bit Player]
A 58% year-to-year increase in monthly unique visitors has resulted in imeem becoming the No. 1 destination for streaming music on the Web, according to statistics collected by compete.com in March 2008; the former No. 1, Yahoo! Music, slipped to No. 2 on a 14% year-to-year dip (9.6 million). Coming in at No. 7 on the Compete countdown with 2.3 million uniques: HM1500, a shorthand term for the aggregate unique-visitor traffic of more than 1,500 music blogs tracked by the Hype Machine. (The Machine itself is at No. 16.) One glaring omission from Compete's list: YouTube, which I use for streaming much, much more than any of the sites in the top 20. (I know, I know, pulling music-only data out is a pain in the butt, but they're an analytics company! They can analyze!) [
Compete.com]
Yahoo! is shutting down its subscription-music service Yahoo! Music Unlimited and migrating whatever users the all-you-can-hear site has left over to Rhapsody. [
WSJ]
Yahoo! and AOL may shut down their Internet-radio services, which have become a pricey proposition for the two online companies because of the 38% royalty increase mandated by SoundExchange. "Yahoo and AOL stopped directing users to their radio sites after SoundExchange, the Washington-based group representing artists and record labels, began collecting the higher fees in July.... As a result, the number of people using Launchcast fell 11 percent to 5.1 million in October, according to ComScore. AOL Radio users declined 10 percent to 2.7 million from 3 million." [
Bloomberg]
Those rumored changes that have been coming to Yahoo! Music? No word on whether the download service will be shuttered yet, but apparently they'll involve "more synergies between our music, games, movies, TV, and omg! properties, making them more personal and engaging for entertainment hounds." Yes, that's right—more synergies between the music department and the hot pink post-verbal paparazzi site
omg!, which can only result in one thing: Furthering the lie that people actually still give a shit about Joel Madden's "music" "career." [
paidContent]
Could the imminent restructuring at Yahoo! result in the Internet giant's music division being radically restructured, or even shut down? Maybe! Or maybe not. [
Hypebot]
Idolator
Remember when it seemed like former Yahoo! Music customers were going to have to repurchase any music they purchased from the now-defunct company and wanted to transfer to another machine? The company intends to make things right, although in a manner yet to be determined. A Yahoo! Music spokesperson told InformationWeek that customers would be "compensated for whatever you paid for the music... We haven't said exactly what we will do, but we will take care of our customers." I suppose that's comforting in some sense, although that promise is so vague, it could mean that Yahoo! is readying a stockpile of warm milk and blankies. Later in that same article, InformationWeek, through no fault of their own, relayed this gem: "Yahoo's experience with shutting down its music store highlights the problem DRM technology can have on consumers." You don't say. [InformationWeek]
