Even
though Apple's iPod is struggling to keep its leading position in Japan, their
recent iTunes launch in
Japan has been a major success, selling a million tunes in just 4 days. Now Yahoo is getting ready to launch its own music store in Japan. In an aim to lure in potential customers, Yahoo is allowing users to stream full tracks from its 100,000 song library for free, unlike other music services that only offer a 30 second preview.
Yahoo's music store is scheduled to launch on August 29th. Their music will be priced at 150 yen (~€1.12) per track for regular music and 210 yen (~€1.57) for music topping the charts. Yahoo aims to boost advertising revenue as well as traffic to its radio / music channels with the help of its music store.
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According to Yahoo Japan spokesman Masaki Hanyu, visitors to the popular portal would be able to choose and listen to tracks from over 100,000 songs. Other sites offering online music allow a user to listen to 30-second song bytes only. The new service is scheduled for launch on August 29, Hanyu said. |
It will be interesting to see if there are any legal issues about offering the ability to stream full tracks for free. I remember several years back when MP3.com offered the ability to stream MP3's from its website so long as the user had the original CDs, however the music industry ended up shutting down this feature. I wonder what the sound quality would be like also of the streams as some music services only offer the previews as a 30 second 32kbps stream.
Source: EARTHtimes.org
