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. 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. At the time of the acquisition by Yahoo, the service had 7.4 million users. 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. The service was integrated with
iHeartRadio in June 2012, providing listeners exclusive access to music events such as the
iHeartRadio Music Festival. 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. MusicMatch Jukebox was launched in 1997 and was bundled with the
iPod Classic as its music manager until the introduction of
iTunes for
Microsoft Windows in 2003. In September 2003, the company launched a
digital music store with 200,000 songs available. It had a partnership with
Dell to promote the service and software. On September 14, 2004, Yahoo acquired
Musicmatch Jukebox for $160 million. However, the service was not integrated well, instead stagnating. It was shut down on August 31, 2007.
Yahoo Music Unlimited In May 2005, Yahoo Music launched Yahoo Music Unlimited, a
music streaming service and
digital music store. 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. The service was praised for its music quality, interface, and cheaper price than competitors.
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. ==References==