Rhapsody taking over Yahoo Music
Yahoo announced today that their on-demand Yahoo Music service is being taken over by RealNetwork's Rhapsody. From the sound of it, Yahoo may be using Rhapsody only as an interim solution, pending resolution of Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo.
I don't think I should be happy about this.
Maybe ten years ago, I became a subscriber to the Musicmatch on-demand service, and I loved it. Two years ago, Yahoo bought Musicmatch and ported all of the existing Musicmatch customers to Yahoo's equivalent on-demand service. The two services have been largely equivalent, at least from my perspective; I've been able to stream anything I was realistically interested in hearing, and the sound quality from both services has been pretty much identical. Yahoo's music player client wasn't as feature-rich as the old Musicmatch player, but it was also a lot less buggy.
I was ambivalent about Yahoo's takeover of Musicmatch, but I've remained a subscriber ever since the buyout, and I've been happy with the service. I love the fact that I can play any music from their library I want to hear, at any time, without having to own the songs or listen to commercials. On-demand rocks, and the Musicmatch/Yahoo subscription rate of about $7 per month has always seemed like a bargain to me.
Now, with Yahoo selling their on-demand service to Rhapsody, I'm faced with the prospect of having to use RealNetwork's crappy Real Player, and I'll have to pay $13 a month for the privilege.
I don't know if it'll be worth it; $13 a month is more than I pay for my XM radio subscription, and I'm yet to hear of any features from Rhapsody that would justify a near-doubling of the subscription price above what I now pay.
Of course, if Microsoft does buy Yahoo, the service could transition away from Rhapsody to Microsoft's Zune Marketplace, which is even more expensive.
No, I'm definitely not happy about this.