Yahoo! Inc. has revealed that its Yahoo! Music Unlimited will now be redirecting its users to Rhapsody America.
Although the site reportedly has 400,000 customers and receives more than 20 million monthly visitors, the service hasn’t soared to what they expected. Users shouldn’t be alarmed about the music videos, music downloads and Internet radio because they will still be accessible.
Yahoo! currently plans to focus on mass audience according to senior vice president Scott Moore. As part of the new deal between the companies, Yahoo will be promoting Rhapsody on its site.
“People want to have music and consume it in lots of different forms and across different devices and platforms and we want to have a play in as many of those as we can,” said Scott Moore, Yahoo’s head of media.
Under the Yahoo-RealNetworks partnership, subscribers to Yahoo Music Unlimited will be shifted to the Rhapsody service sometime in the first half of this year. Yahoo subscribers’ music library and payment plans will remain the same for a limited time after the switch, but those wishing to remain on Rhapsody eventually will be required to sign up at Rhapsody’s rates.
Yahoo’s subscription rates range from $5.99 a month, if users pay for a full year in advance, or $8.99 a month. Rhapsody memberships start at $12.99 a month.
Users of Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription rate was set at $5.99 a month, but now with Rhapsody, users will be paying out $12.99 on a monthly basis for using the music services on the web only. Downloading of songs to any device, users will pay a fee $14.99.
According to Dan Sheeran, a senior vice president at RealNetworks, the Yahoo deal would not be altered even if Microsoft succeeds in acquiring the company.
In addition to this announcement, the company plans to announce Monday that it has acquired FoxyTunes, a browser plug-in that offers features such as online searches for music, lyrics and other content tied to media playing on a computer which also recently launched a Web-based media player.
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