Yahoo music ups the heat with lower prices here to stay

Yahoo music has announced that it will keep its low music prices as they enter into the commercial launch phase. The marketing chief has confirmed that current prices of unlimited downloads for $7 a month will stay while people who subscribe to a 12 month contract will only pay a monthly fee of $5.

Yahoo has shown that its 100% committed to its music
service with some aggressive marketing on television and also into some computer
games. Unfortunately for those outside the United States the service is currently not available and no news of other launches has been announced. Those with an Apple iPod should not even bother subscribing to the service as it's based on the Windows Media Audio codec which the Apple iPod isn't compatible with.

Yahoo may offer some great pricing compared to other music download services the problem is that Apple still dominates the portable music player market with it's iPod range and these devices are only compatible with their Apple iTunes service. While Yahoo will fight it out with the other WMA based music services Apple will still control most of the digital music market.

While the iPod doesn't currently support any other music service apart from iTunes, Apple is pretty much protected from any competition, so it doesn't have to worry about rival services and sales of subscriptions services. Apple can concentrate and make sure that the iPod is even better and sell more of them to attract people to their music service.

Napster will now face increasing pressure from Yahoo as it currently charges $15 a month for the same package that Yahoo offers.

Yahoo! has confirmed it will maintain its low music subscription charges as its Yahoo! Music service moves out of its testing phase.In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Yahoo! marketing chief Cammie Dunaway said the trial pricing plans would stand.YM was launched in May, and offered monthly unlimited-download subscriptions for $7. Subscribers who made a 12-month commitment to the service paid only $5 a month. Those figures compare with the $15 a month services like Napster charge for the same package, which includes full support for portable MP3 players. Yahoo! this week unveiled an aggressive advertising programme to promote its music service. The scheme includes TV advertising during the MTV Awards show on 28 August, along with ads integrated into upcoming video games, the company said.Yahoo! Music is currently only open to US consumers. The service is supplied by online music distributed MusicNet, and is compatible only with Windows Media-based devices. iPod owners need not apply. But therein lies Apple's strength, leaving Yahoo! to fight it out with rival WMA suppliers like Napster, Virgin Digital and Wal-Mart, and left-field players like RealNetworks and Sony. With hardware sales driving music download demand, and Apple owning the hardware market, it's also unsurprisingly got the lion's share of the download business. And its iTunes jukebox software has helped it win customers who just want to buy songs to play on their PCs. Crucially, until the iPod supports WMA, there's little reason for an iPod owner to buy songs from anyone other than Apple, insulating the company from the fight between the other vendors, all tussling for the attention of Creative, Samsung, iRiver etc owners. So does Apple's focus on sales rather than subscriptions.

Source: The Register