If you have checked the news today you should already be aware of Yahoo!’s new online music platform, although I have to say that I don’t recall anymore, why I wrote the word “new”… I don’t see anything new about this service. From what I’ve seen on the info pages and in the news articles it’s yet another online store with Windows Media DRM’d music which you can only listen to on a small number of devices and you also need yet another application on your PC for downloading the music. Really impressive.
The only feature that looked at least a little bit new to me, is the combination with online radio. No thanks. I mean… why should I pay for online radion if there are such great services like SomaFM or Last.fm?! Donating to thank the developers and paying just for pure service is still a little bit of a difference to me (and yes, I see my paying for a pro account on Flickr more as a donation ;-) ).
That’s all about the “new” things there, let’s get to the interesting ones: The pricing. 5USD per month and then 0.79USD per download. Nice, but since this is more a renting service than a buying service it’s still not really a good offer…
I really wonder, when someone in the MI will get the glorious idea of starting a services that’s good for the customer while not really hurting the MI… like offering MP3s or Vorbis files instead of this WMA DRM junk. Just in case the MI hasn’t noticed it yet: Their stupid copy protections only hit the people who actually pay for the CDs. It seems like they also want to lose their last honest customers. Have fun.
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