“Yahoo Inc. intends on making the online music-subscription market a little more crowded Wednesday by launching a new service that costs less than half of what some rivals are charging. The major difference between Yahoo’s new music service and rival music services can be seen in the prices. Napster charges $14.95 a month for its Napster To Go offering, while Real’s Rhapsody To Go service costs $179 a year, or just under $12 a month.”
MacDailyNews Note: $14.95*12 months=$179.40, $12*12 months=$144.
“The Yahoo Music Unlimited service will cost $6.99 a month, or $59.98 for a full-year subscription,” AFX News reports. “Users will then be able to play songs on their computers or on portable MP3 music players that use the Microsoft Windows Media format… All the subscription services are taking aim at Apple Computer and its dominance with its iTunes Music Store and iPod music player. On Tuesday, Apple said it has sold more than 400 million songs through iTunes. But, unlike the subscription services, iTunes songs can be bought on a per-song or album basis and only be played on Apple’s line of iPod players.”
MacDailyNews Note: Songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store can be played on Macs and PCs, burned to CDs and reimported in other formats, including MP3 which can be played in any non-iPod portable music player.
Full article here.
[UPDATE: 8:40am ET: After the bell yesterday, in after hours trading, Napster (NAPS) shares nose-dived 20.8% and RealNetworks (RNWK) dropped 11.9%. Guess that’s how the Krispy Kreme crumbles, huh, Rob?]
MacDailyNews Take: Come one, come all! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the commoditization of online music subscription services! Watch as Napster, Real, and Yahoo attempt to kill each other off! Who’ll be first? Will it be Real quick? Or will another take the dirt Nap first? Can a bunch of Yahoos sell online music that’s incompatible with the iPod world? Watch as Apple sails past their first one billion songs milestone and growth continues unabated at ever-accelerating rates! A great time will be had by all! All who own iPods and/or use the iTunes Music Store, that is.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
J.P. Morgan: Yahoo music service ‘does little to break Apple’s tight grip’ on digital music market – May 11, 2005
Apple debuts iTunes Music Store in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland; over 400,000,000 songs sold – May 10, 2005
I’m sticking with my iTunes. But if I was one of those PC sheeple, I would definitely run with the Yahoo service.
Yahoo too, eh? WHY?!
What do these companies hope to gain?
Has anyone even sold even half as much music as ITMS? Who else has the international reach of ITMS as well?
MDN is right… it will be interesting to see who’s left in a year or so.
I dunno, $6.99 is a pretty compelling price. I don’t understand how they can do it though. If Apple is just breaking even selling $.99 songs, then how can these other guys sell them for so much less?
Why not subscribe and burn em to CD and import to iTunes? I don’t have the stereo equipment to tell the difference.
Seems to me only Apple’s business model can succeed, but as a consumer, $6.99/month looks like a pretty good deal. That said, what a pain to get that music on my iPod or iTunes. I love to be able to search for a song, sample and download in less than 2 minutes. Plug in my iPod and I’m GtG.
Maybe deals ike this Yahoo one will cause the record industry to crumble, putting the music back inthe hands of the musicians and the people insead of the corporations. No wonder our country’s going to pot. We need musical freedom, baby!
Napster claimed to shareholders recently that what they were selling for $10 per month was costing around $2 – $3 per month. What they didn’t mention was music industry can increase prices when it suits them given one caveat that it’s very similar to internet radio the pricing of which was the subject of a court case a year or two ago. Napster and Real have been living on borrowed time, Napster (or at least many shareholders) was always waiting for a big buyout, Creative or possibly LG or Samsung looked good bets. They still are good bets but not a good prices, more like firesale prices.
Want a good laugh? Check this chart out after the markets open on Wednesday morning.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=naps,rnwk,msft
….”But, unlike the subscription services, iTunes songs can be bought on a per-song or album basis and only be played on Apple’s line of iPod players.”..
How then was I listening to my latest iTunes downloads on my car’s CD player today?
ONCE AGAIN, MACDAILYNEWS has pegged it right on the money. Not sure why why everyone else seems to think it’s the same market. The people who buy itunes & CD’s are perfectly clear. The “if I like this song/CD, I’m buying it.” They pay and get something. End of transaction. Money in the bank. For Apple, that’s $400 million (give or take) not to mention sales of ipods.
everyone else is fighting over the “mix CD-tapeheads” market – I am willing to pay a little to stream songs – record the streams and whatever. YOu can probably download 10-20 CD’s a day so after a month, that’s a nice return on your $10 to $20. As MacDailyNews points out very correctly, this is a commodity market because these are people who are one step above illegal downloads – they’re willing to shell a little as long as their track cost works out to be about $.10 each, they’re okay with that so they’ll sign up for free offers (Napster 2.0) – quit – sign up for REal’s 25 free songs – then switch to Yahoo.
How do you know thi is the ‘mix-CD tapehead’ market? How many people do you know who like a song enough to listen to dozens, hundreds, thousands of tracks, sort them to like and dislikes, download it, transfer it to a compatible portable player (a $300 commitment) but NOT enough to buy the track outright – how many music buffs do you know like that besides poor college students who know how to record streams?
Nice take, MDN!
The interesting thing about these music rental services is that you have to continue paying for your music for as long as you want to listen to it. If I bought 100 songs from iTunes and listened to them periodically for 15 years, that’s $99. If I downloaded 100 songs from the rental service and listened to them periodically for 15 years, that’s $1,258.20. Hmmmmmm.
remember this is streaming.. no downloading going on. You stream from your player, like the radio. You own nothing.
It’s a feeding frenzy! ‘Cept everybody but Apple is at the wrong trough. har. This is just delightful.
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“Why not subscribe and burn em to CD and import to iTunes?”
Because (at least with Napster and Rhapsody) a subscription only gives you access to music on your PC or MP3 player, but doesn’t give you the right/ability to burn a CD. For that you have to pay 99¢ per song. Exactly the same as iTMS!! This is the other side of Napster/Rhapsody’s dirty little secret that they never mention.
Of course you can use the slow-and-dirty way and record them as they play on your PC…
It looks like its going to be Yahoo versus Apple. Neither Real nor Rhaposody has the resources for an extended battle with Yahoo. When these companies give up the ghost, how are those who rented music going to feel when all their songs are lost? The biggest problem the subscription services have is the interface between the PC’s and the players and the interface of the players themselves. That plus the iPod’s coolness factor should keep Apple in the lead.
Well, well, welllll . . . it looks like one more yahoo has been set up for a fall. Yeh-hehessss. I love it. “Like sands through the hourglass, these are de services full of lies.” Yehesssss.
Well I’m paraphrasing, but you get it.
SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC RENTS YOU THE GARBAGE SONGS AND MAKES YOU PAY FOR THE GOOD ONES BEFORE DOWNLOADING.
learn how to save all subscription music for free here
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000910031543/
Of course if your not afraid of using a PayPal account with the russians, visit allofmp3.com and download all you want by the mb per sec in any bitrate/format you want right from the original cd’s. Give them a cd they don’t have and you get a discount.
Renting music is for idiots. Stealing music is for thieves. Buying music from iTunes is honest and supports Apple and the artists.
1-The largest retailer in the world, Wal-Mart, has joined Comp USA, Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, Radio Shack and others in selling the iPod. Consider this despite the fact that Wal-Mart has it’s own WMA music store.
2-The largest PC maker in the world, Dell, is getting it’s a*s handed to it daily by the iPod. Dell cannot give the Dell Digital Junkbox away.
3-In the first 60 days of being on sale, the iPod shuffle has become the #1 flash-memory music player in the market.
4-Sony, the name synonymous with portable music over the last two decades, is getting thrashed by Apple’s iPod and iTunes Music Store.
5-HP, the second largest PC maker in the world, had the good sense to partner with Apple and re-market the iPod and provide software to integrate it into the Windows Media Center PCs it sells.
6-Kroger, the largest stand alone grocer in the USA, and Walgreens, the largest drug store in the USA, are now selling iTunes Music Store prepaid cards.
7-Apple is shipping iPods at a rate approaching 2 million a month and is headed for it’s 1/2 billionth music download. To put that in perspective, Apple is selling iPods at a faster rate since it’s launch than Sony did with the Walkman almost 25 years ago.
8-Before the kiddies go back to school, Motorola will be offering iTunes capable cell phones and quite possibly a Sirius or XM type satellite delivered radio stream.
9-With the latest version of iTunes, Apple is delivering VIDEO along with music on some of it’s downloads.
10-The new PSP has AAC support and could easily be software upgraded to include FairPlay DRM. This would allow iTMS songs to travel on your PSP.
What’s the problem?
Hey Chew-
On #7 I think you meant to say 2 million a DAY, not month.
Oops! My bad, Chew! I see now you said iPods, not songs. But at any rate, they are creeping closer and closer to 2 million songs a day- sounds good anyway!
“But, unlike the subscription services, iTunes songs can be bought on a per-song or album basis and only be played on Apple’s line of iPod players”.
This used to puzzle me a lot, you see I’ve never owned an iPod but the tiny little mp3 players that I can mount on sunglasses. As I’ve bought music and audio books they always get burned on CD as a backup. I just lost over 1200 songs from HD, but no problem. I guess if I can wear shorts all the time it doesn’t mean computer likes it.
David Card over at http://www.jupiterresearch.com blogs that the $6.99 monthly price and $59.88 for full-year commitment are limited time offers. Yahoo is eating the price difference between its contracts with the labels (which are similar to those for Napster and Real) and these initial prices. (Reminds me of the Real money-losing sale in Aug-Sep 2004.)
Of course Yahoo differs from Real in that it earns a stream of dough via ads.
i can’t agree with you more, strategy, when you said “ahoo differs from real in that it earns a stream of dough via ads.” this will allow yahoo to undercut both real and napster for many years to come. dominance for them will be achieve with an update to yahoo messenger that will also be the player. this could take apple down a couple of notches as far as install base. yahoo messenger will serve as yahoo’s trojan horse, as the messenger is only 2nd to aim.
“But, unlike the subscription services, iTunes songs can be bought on a per-song or album basis and only be played on Apple’s line of iPod players.”
It drives me nuts that the media constantly gets this wrong.
You can play iTunes purchased songs on your computer, on your iPod, or burn them to CD and then play them on any standard CD player.
1 second of research would be nice from the main stream media.
I’m also irked when I read the reverse…. iPods can only play music bought from the iTunes Music Store.
Why is the MSM so stupid?
subscription service model suits much better with movies.
hope we will be seeing this soon from you and awaiting your itms service downunder.
“why is msn so stupid?”
because they are owned in part by microsoft.
When it comes down to it, I think people want to own what they put their money into. I think a lot of the downloading pirating frenzy came from people who didn’t want to pay $14 for a favorite song off of a CD. Or those who wanted to sample music before they shelled out the cash.
ITunes has given the perfect model way to do that. If the CD at the store has nothing special in its packaging or quality (like the NIN dual disc 5.1 sound) then I am buying it with iTunes.
I don’t want to pay $10 or $15 a month for music files I don’t own. It just seems pointless to me.
MSM=Mainstream media, I imagine, not typoed “MSN”