It's been a good seven months since Yahoo killed off its own music service in favor of teaming up with RealNetworks' Rhapsody. The evolution of this partnership finally surfaced on Yahoo's search results late Wednesday evening. Now any time you do a search for an artist or song name you'll be able to play up to four of their tracks, in full length, right from the results. Previously the system only allowed for 30-second previews.
The updated service allows for up to 25 full-length plays per month, although users who sign up to be a part of Rhapsody's $13-a-month subscription service can get unlimited streaming plays. The music plays from the built-in Yahoo Media Player the company is calling FoxyPlayer. It automatically keeps track of how many plays you've had and includes shortcuts to the source album, lyrics, and artist page. Once you move off the page the player disappears, so if you want to keep listening you have to leave that window or tab open.
The music artist shortcut box that appears on the top of your search results now lets you play full-length songs, which works well on many major artists except Oasis, which for some reason is limited to karaoke tracks.
(Credit: CNET Networks)In my testing I found the player to be excellent, however Yahoo's system is still fragmented. Using Yahoo's audio search still provides short samples that play without the benefit of the player, and the basic search does not always pick up your artists, despite them being in Yahoo Music's catalog.
In the case of a big band like Oasis the only full-length tracks available were karaoke samples; once played, they still counted toward the 25-song monthly cap. When I wanted to see other songs in the collection it hopped me over to the download page where you could only listen to 30-second samples, something that will be switching over to full-length tracks "soon" according to a post on Yahoo's search blog.
All of this jumping around is bound to be confusing to the average user unless they're looking for big-name bands. Going forward, the most powerful option is going to be a player that follows you from page to page and smarter recognition of band names that are pulled up when users are searching.
Update: Made a correction regarding the FoxyPlayer being related to technology from Foxytunes.
Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, who left the Yahoo-acquired company in June, has a new gig. She posted on her blog on Wednesday that she'll be joining a stealthy New York-based start-up, Hunch, as "Chief Product Officer, board member, and resident Facebook app skeptic."
So what is Hunch? That's under the radar, but we're hearing from a well-placed source that it's a recommendation engine that uses "collective crowd intelligence." That doesn't sound too original, but our source hinted that the technology behind it is pretty top-notch. It's still under development, but when Hunch is finished, it will presumably be able to provide recommendations on just about anything or everything. (Hence the name "Hunch.")
What Fake did say: that she won't be relocating to New York, but will spend a lot of time there; that her husband and Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield isn't involved; that Hunch invites will start to go out in the fall; and that she still doesn't find much time to sleep.
Folks who are tapping into their tunes via the Yahoo Music Jukebox music player may find themselves at risk of allowing a malicious attacker into their computer, according to a security advisory issued Monday by Secunia.
The "extremely critical" security vulnerabilities are found in Yahoo Music Jukebox version 2.2.2.056 and possibly other versions, according to Secunia. The heightened warning comes as exploit code has been made public, which could give malicious attackers a road map to follow should they want to compromise a user's computer.
According to Secunia, users who have the Yahoo Music Jukebox loaded on their system and visit a malicious Web site could find themselves at risk. The security flaws are found in the way certain ActiveX controls in the Yahoo music player process information, which could cause a buffer overflow problem. An attacker could then exploit the vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code from a user's computer.
Secunia advises Yahoo Music Jukebox users to set the "kill-bit" for the affected ActiveX controls, as a means to minimize any potential threat to their system.
Yahoo was not immediately available for comment. But stay tuned.
It's been a tumultuous few days for Yahoo--you know, with that takeover bid from Microsoft--but the company continues to shake things up internally, too.
On Monday, the company announced that it will discontinue its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service and will transfer its customers to RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.
In mid-2008, Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will be guided through an in-browser process to convert their music libraries to Rhapsody's service. For a limited time (length unknown), they'll be able to keep paying Yahoo's subscription fees, which cap out at $8.99 per month, before being required to start paying Rhapsody's $12.99 monthly fee.
Additionally, Yahoo announced in conjunction that it has acquired FoxyTunes, a browser plug-in that is compatible with multiple desktop and Web-based music players.
RealNetworks, which acquired Rhapsody when it purchased parent Listen.com for $36 million in 2003, has been partnering with both hardware manufacturers like TiVo and media companies like Viacom's MTV Networks. It's the company's best strategy for staying afloat in a digital music landscape that's not only dominated by Apple's iTunes but also seems to be gravitating toward "free," not subscription-based models.
But the announcement with Yahoo is shrouded in uncertainty, for obvious reasons. Just about anything could happen to Yahoo if Microsoft's proposed $44.6 billion acquisition goes through.
RealNetworks, ironically, has a hostile history with Microsoft, too, dating back to an antitrust scuffle several years ago that led to a partnership in which RealNetworks ultimately claimed it was shortchanged.
- MySpace and Photobucket make amends. The block on videos from Photobucket for MySpace users was lifted yesterday. According to a post on the Photobucket blog, "open lines of communication and procedures with MySpace" were made to make sure it doesn't happen again. The blockage affected nearly a quarter of Photobucket's 40 million registered users. Related: MySpace launched a version of its site today for Latino Americans.
- Yahoo, Gracenote launch lyrics service. Yahoo Music users will now be able to pick up the lyrics to their songs after a deal was made with digital media company Gracenote. Many other services have employed Gracenote's services, including iTunes, which pulls album and track information from its extensive database.
- Amazon store to compete with iTunes? Next month could bring the launch of a new music store from Amazon.com. Speculation says the new store might carry tracks which haven't been given DRM copyright protection, something that's recently been done by Apple with its EMI deal.
[All stories from CNET News.com]
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
- prev
- 1
- next
