Just saw a number of hits coming from MacDailyNews — welcome fellow Macheads — and they are all over the prophetic talents of Steve Jobs. Back in May of this year, Jobs and company were betting that it would be five months before Yahoo music raised their introductory pricing. PC Mag is reporting that now — surprise, surprise — five months later, Yahoo Music is raising their prices.

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.

Month to month subscribers will see an increase from $6.99 to $11.99 a month. This just made Y! Music less enticing. My son prefers Napster which is $9.99 a month for the regular service and $14.99 for the service that you can use with Napster To Go.

The article also points out the bigger brewing issue that could have catastrophic impact on the growing online music market: 2006 online music pricing. Lest we forget that Warner Music CEO, Edgar Bronfman wants a price hike for online music which Jobs thinks would be a step backwards. If the price goes up, will consumers just roll over and pay?

Besides Jobs making the five month prediction, this isn’t that surprising. Yahoo had always maintained that it was introductory pricing. The strategy seems to have been to come in, low ball the competition, make a dent in market share (at a loss) and then raise the prices and hope to keep a healthy percentage of subscribers. iTunes doesn’t seem to have lost any thunder, so the question is how much of a dent did Y! Music have in Napster and the other subscription music service?

My son, a huge music fan, preferred the Napster service over Y! Music, so back to them we went last month. According to Apple’s figures, iTunes hasn’t suffered so Y! Music was battling with the other guys.

As for Steve Jobs going all Miss Cleo? Will we see iTunes doing a subscription music service in the next five months? There are people who actually like the idea of renting the music library for online playback. Come on, Mr. Jobs, give us a hint into your crystal ball. What’s coming next?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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