Oceanside, Nevada

Dr. Death keeps asking me if I’ve checked out Yahoo’s new music service. I turned my back on Yahoo a long time ago, so I don’t really pay much attention to what they roll out anymore. As I recall, the final straw was when they decided to charge for me to use my email client to access my free webmail address. So my choice was to pay for email (a ridiculous idea) or slog though their slow, buggy and ad-packed web mail interface. I left and rarely looked back. Now that Google offers maps and directions, I don’t use Yahoo at all.

So, let’s look at Yahoo’s “Music Engine.”

Play and “save” over 1 million songs (with a $4.99/month subscription)

So, $60 a year to rent a million songs. Yes, you’re renting, because when you stop paying you can’t play the tunes anymore.

Share full songs using Yahoo! Messenger.

Big effing deal. I can share “full songs” I already own in literally dozens of other ways without paying $60 a year to do it.

Exclusive pre-programmed radio stations

Yo, Yahoo! You’re really trying to put me to sleep here, aren’t you? How many Internet based radio stations are there that I don’t have to pay to hear? Oh, right, there’s thousands of them. Exclusive? Better be pretty effing exclusive, that’s all I can say.

Rip and burn CD’s, create playlists.

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

Cost per song to burn a CD and transfer to a “non-compatible device”:

Drum roll please: $.79 with subscription $.99 alá carte. Wow, that’s twenty cents per song saved! Holy cow! And it only costs $60 a year to get that kind of savings! That’s like, like 60 songs at $.99 on the iTunes Music Store without the subscription!

Discover new music through other members.

Or you could discover new music for nothing though AudioScrobbler/last.fm. And it’s even based upon the tastes of people who like the same music you do. Oh, and it’s free too.

What we have here folks, is Yahoo, seemingly unable to come up with any original ideas of it’s own and loathe to just copy either Napster or the iTMS, decided to just copy both of them. At the same time. Really. Just look at the feature page for the Yahoo! Music Engine. On the left is Napster, on the right is the iTMS.

Okay, so let me recap here: $60 a year for a million songs that go away when I stop paying. Check. Works with any mp3 player, so long as it’s not an iPod. Check. For the low, low, price of $.99/song ($.79 with a subscription), I can burn a CD and then rip to mp3 and THEN transfer to my iPod (or, I could, um just pay $.99 per song, no subscription, burn to CD or just use the software that came with my non-iPod to transfer mp3′s to my, uh, non-iPod).

Simply amazing. It makes one wonder if they don’t plan to rent human waste to the masses next. Surely someone will pay for that.

So, Dr. Death, I looked at Yahoo’s music offering. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it sucks, but there’s certainly nothing new here. Oh, and it won’t work on your Mac anyway.

Technorati Tags: computers, gadgets, iPod, music, stupid

Tags: No Comments