14 DAY TRIAL // Talks have been held in the direction of allowing Yahoo! to offer DRM-free music for free or in exchange for a small fee, as a part of a service that's self-supporting. Although in the early stages, the discussions were pretty straightforward about what the Sunnyvale-based company wanted, a couple of record company execs told the Associated Press.
The online service from Yahoo! has not been given a launch date but, by the looks of it, it's going to be brought online this year. As music is the way the Internet company is making a push, this might bring it an unprecedented advantage over its competitors, especially Apple's iTunes who wouldn't lower its prices for anything in the world. When talking about DRM-free music, this could even be better than Pepsi's offer that can be resumed as "buy Pepsi, download music" because it requires no second stipulation.
It would be a huge step forward if the deal is to go through and the music is to be given for free, but that's a lot to be asking for and the monetization program that would support this would really have to be top notch. I just hope that the downloaded product won't be the advertisement in itself, with a short commercial break at the beginning or at the middle of the song, that would utterly suck.
Carrie Davis, a spokeswoman for Yahoo! told the AP that this is not new grounds for her company to be stepping on, as the Sunnyvale based company often said that giving music without copy protections is one of its goals and that talks have been going around this subject for a while now. However she denied having heard of any intensification of the matter when dealing with record labels as of late. Not surprising, I wouldn't want to confirm what might be my biggest advantage in years to come, either.