Yahoo! Music Unlimited: Music Download Subscription from Yahoo!

Napster started it with their TO DO service and Real followed it with Rhapsody. Apple has stated that they are watching the market closely and might do it as well if they think the trends are harming them with their iTunes Music Store. The latest to follow these companies with a music download subscription service is Yahoo! through their Yahoo! Music Unlimited offering.

The service offer all-you-can-download music rental plan and that includes the songs a user can upload to their digital music player. The service is in beta currently and has some bugs but overall the user experience seems to be positive. One of the surprises of this new service is the price tag. Yahoo! is offering early bird packages of USD 59.88 for a year, which comes to just less than USD 5 per month!

The competing services charge a lot more with Rhapsody To Go available at $13.32 per month on a year’s package. Yahoo! is also offering a monthly package costing just USD 7.99. However, these prices might change as the tag line on the Yahoo! Music Unlimited webpage says: “Over 1 Million Songs to go. $4.99/month. This price WON’T LAST.”

Yahoo! Music Unlimited has a range of more than a million songs, which places it around at par with the competing services including Apple iTunes. The versions available for download are encoded at 192-Kbps WMA files… Streamed songs are 128 Kbps WMA. Compliance with Microsoft’s PlayForSure means that the Songs will play only on the PC they reside on, or on the handful of certified Microsoft Plays-for-Sure devices.

The company lists just around 9 players compatible with the service and Apple iPod is of course not one of them considering Apple does not approve iPod to support non iTunes digital music store. The service for now is available only in the United States.