“Portal company Yahoo Inc. informed customers of its subscription music download service that it will increase pricing for users who transfer their tunes onto portable devices or CDs,” Matt Hines reports for PC Magazine. “The Sunnyvale, Calif., firm forwarded an e-mail to its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers late Thursday telling customers that it plans to double the fee it charges for the so-called unlimited service from $4.99 per month to $9.99 per month, for people who buy the service on an annual basis.”
Hines reports, “Yahoo said people who subscribe to the download service on a monthly basis will see their memberships increase from $6.99 per month to $11.99 per month. Unlike subscribers to Apple Computer Inc.’s market leading iTunes music service, who pay 99 cents per song download and own the music forever thereafter, Yahoo’s service more closely mimics the offerings of Napster LLC and RealNetworks Inc., which allow users to download as many songs as they wish for use on their computers, but levee additional fees for permanent ownership of the digital content. In addition to the higher subscription fee, Yahoo charges subscribers 79 cents per download for music they want to keep for usage on a portable device or to burn onto CDs.”
Hines reports, “Yahoo claims that its service still represents the best deal on the market, while Napster charges a similar $9.95 per-month fee, plus 80 cents for each permanent download. Real’s Rhapsody service costs $9.99 for downloads to computers, while its Rhapsody to Go package, which allows users to transfer content to mobile devices, retails for $14.95 per month.”
Full article here.
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Grabbing as much cash as they can to minimize losses before shutting it down? We prefer to own our music, rather than rent. We also prefer seamless compatibility with our iPods and software that works for both Macs and Windows PCs. For those reasons we’ll stick with iTunes Music Store, thanks.
Related articles:
BusinessWeek: Apple unlikely to launch music subscription service – August 15, 2005
Analyst: Apple will lose market share to subscription services, fact that iTunes is tied to iPod – May 17, 2005
Study shows Apple iTunes Music Store pay-per-download model preferred over subscription service – April 11, 2005