Comments on: The cutthroat online music biz

By: Make You Go Hmm: » “Google has done a better job than us,” says Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 16:58:58 +0000

[…] Yahoo is citing paying subscribers as a key revenue increase source and that’s no surprise considering how Y! Music came onto the scene and cut out the knees of their competition with their introductory price plan. […]

By: Make You Go Hmm: » Yahoo axes auction listing fees

Make You Go Hmm: » Yahoo axes auction listing fees — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 07:25:09 +0000

[…] ic — by TDavid @ 2:23 am

As if cutting off Napster and Rhapsody at the knees with an aggressive — and unable to sustain, according to those in the Apple office […]

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 12 May 2005 20:49:08 +0000

Wow, thanks for the details, Adam LMK if you blog about this (trackback it, please). I haven’t had time to take Y! for a spin but it sounds very promising. The fact that they will be providing API access is even more encouraging to me. I’ll find out what my son thinks about it later tonight or tomorrow.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 12 May 2005 19:43:45 +0000

I subscribe to Napster and Virgin Digital, and just played with Y! Music last night for several hours.

Aside from price, YME is better than Napster because:
- It learns what you like
- It has more diverse radio stations
- The player offers more features
- YME has useful and fun plugins!

Napster is better than YME because:
- Though counterintuitive due to file sizes, Napster songs *seem* to sound richer and brighter!
- Napster lists all songs by an artist in one easily sortable list. With YME, you have to click on each album.
- YME has crashed or frozen on me several times
- It integrates with Windows Media Player (where I’ve already made playlists, added ratings, etc.)
- It has Billboard charts
- It has message boards
- It doesn’t bring up IE for lots of pages

* * *

I’m still forking over $60 for YME, because I think it has a lot of potential, and I don’t know how long that low price will last. But I’ll be keeping my Napster and Virgin Digital subscriptions in the meantime.