Yahoo! Music Unlimited was an on-demand online music service launched on May 10, 2005 and provided by

Yahoo! Music Yahoo! Music was a brand under which Yahoo! provided a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming. Previously, users with Yahoo! accounts could gain access to hundreds o ...

. The service was discontinued on September 30, 2008.

Service

Users paid a subscription fee to access a library of over two million songs which could be either

streamed Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

or downloaded as

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement milita ...

'd WMA files and played from a computer in near CD quality sound. Subscribers could also download songs at a discounted rate of $0.79 per song for transfer to CD or supported portable devices. Yahoo! Music Engine was the original client for the service. Subsequently, the client changed to the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. The service required an active

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

connection to play Yahoo! Music Unlimited tracks added to Yahoo! Music Jukebox's My Music.

Billing

Yahoo! offered 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 were added to both plans. The subscription services were only available for users living in the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and required a credit card (no other billing method was 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.

Features

Users who subscribed to Yahoo! Music Unlimited were 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. The digital rights management employed by Yahoo prevents a user from freely distributing these tracks. Users living outside the US or Canada could still download the player and enjoy the features of the Yahoo! Music Engine, a software product that functioned as a music collection organizer similar to iTunes. Yahoo! tech support reported that

Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The ...

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...

, similar to

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, was used at 192 kbit/s for all songs. This is a high-quality encoding and without high-end playback equipment, nearly indistinguishable from CD.

Similar services

The former

Napster To Go Napster, commonly known as “Napster 2.0”, was a music streaming service and digital music store, launched by Roxio in 2003 under the purchased name and trademarks of former free peer-to-peer file sharing software Napster in the aftermath ...

and Rhapsody Unlimited, provided by Napster and RealNetworks respectively, were both similar to Yahoo! Music Unlimited, although subscription fees were slightly higher. Yahoo also offered Musicmatch On Demand, a streaming music subscription service available through the

Musicmatch Jukebox MusicMatch Jukebox was an audio player made by San Diego-based MusicMatch, Inc. It contained features commonly found in jukebox software such as the ability to manage digital audio files and playlists, audio file conversion, an online music s ...

client. On August 31, 2007, Musicmatch Jukebox shut down. Musicmatch temporarily offered a free migration to Yahoo Music Unlimited.

Discontinuation

The Yahoo Music Unlimited service was discontinued on September 30, 2008. Yahoo's existing users were either transferred to Rhapsody (if they chose to transfer) or had their accounts deactivated
Yahoo-Rhapsody FAQ

References

Yahoo! Music Unlimited launchesYahoo! Raises Fees for Online Digital Music Service

External links

Yahoo! Music UnlimitedList of devices compatible with Yahoo! Music Unlimited To GoYahoo Music Unlimited Developer Ian Rogers Discusses The Service
{{Music digital distribution platforms Online music database clients Defunct online music stores Defunct digital music services or companies Music Unlimited Defunct online companies of the United States