AfterDawn: News

Web based giant Yahoo is to launch its own online music service later this year, despite buying MusicMatch for $160 million. Yahoo has been developing its own music player software since late last year and is still planning to launch it even after buying MusicMatch just days ago. The company will probably run both services side by side for some time before ultimately drawing on MusicMatch's technology and bringing its subscribers into the Yahoo fold. After staying out of the online digital music business for a year now, it seems that this approach could bring Yahoo to the top in a business that has already got some serious competition such as Microsoft and Apple.

"We're making a big investment," said David Goldberg, who runs Yahoo's Launch digital music subsidiary, "We want to be the major player in digital music." Yahoo is already very far behind its rivals. Apples iTunes music store has already sold well over 100 million tracks. Real and Napster seem to be only developing interest from online consumers now though with use of special promotions and reduced prices. Microsoft and Sony however are new to the business and only starting to find their way now. The buying of MusicMatch has brought Yahoo a very popular jukebox, a download store similar to the iTunes store, a net radio service that currently has about 160,000 subscribers and a recently launched subscription service.



Source:
News.com

Written by: James Delahunty @ 20 Sep 2004 2:27