Yahoo Music

Yahoo Music Radio

In June 2001, after the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Yahoo acquired LAUNCH Media, which was facing financial difficulty, for $12 million.[3][4][5] In addition to a website with music news and videos, it provided an Internet radio service that allowed users to create personalized Internet radio stations by rating songs selected by a recommender system. Users were also able to listen to music from 150 preset Internet radio stations. The service offered both an advertising supported free version and a subscription fee-based premium version.[6] At the time of the acquisition by Yahoo, the service had 7.4 million users.[7]

In December 2008, the service was integrated into CBS Radio due to a rise in royalty rates, with CBS taking full control of the service, including advertising and sales and adding compatibility with Firefox and Safari.[8][9][10][11]

The service was integrated with iHeartRadio in June 2012, providing listeners exclusive access to music events such as the iHeartRadio Music Festival.[12] The service was shut down in early 2014 without any announcement.

Musicmatch Jukebox

Musicmatch was a media player software that also operated an internet radio service, which allowed users choose the artist they want to listen to but not the song.[13] MusicMatch Jukebox was launched in 1997[14] and was bundled with the iPod Classic as its music manager until the introduction of iTunes for Microsoft Windows in 2003.[15] In September 2003, the company launched a digital music store with 200,000 songs available.[16][17] It had a partnership with Dell to promote the service and software.[18]

On September 14, 2004, Yahoo acquired Musicmatch Jukebox for $160 million. However, the service was not integrated well, instead stagnating.[19] It was shut down on August 31, 2007.[20]

Yahoo Music Unlimited

In May 2005, Yahoo Music launched Yahoo Music Unlimited, a music streaming service and digital music store.[21][22][23][24][25] Users paid a subscription fee to access a library of over two million songs which could be either streamed or downloaded as DRM-protected Windows Media Audio files and played from a computer in near CD quality sound. Subscribers could also download songs for transfer to CD or supported portable devices with an additional per-song payment. Yahoo Music Jukebox was the software used for the service. The service required an active Internet connection. It was discontinued on September 30, 2008.[26][27] The service was praised for its music quality, interface, and cheaper price than competitors.[28][29]

Yahoo Music Jukebox

Yahoo Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo Music Engine, was a freeware media player software released by Yahoo in 2005 to compete with iTunes and Rhapsody in the digital music market.[30][31][32][33][34]