RealNetworks and Napster have all the reasons to be afraid

May 11, 2005 08:54 GMT  ·  By

Starting from yesterday, the music market has another serious competitor, which is decided to take the largest piece of the digital music cake.

Yahoo Music Unlimited will offer users the possibility of downloading as many songs they want from the 1 million title catalogue for the monthly sum of 6.99 dollars per month. If the contract is signed for one year, Yahoo Music Unlimited will be accessible for only 4.99 dollars per month.

It's obvious that once the subscription ends, the downloaded songs will not be playable anymore. Yahoo Music Unlimited is planning to offer songs subscribers the chance to buy songs for 79 cents, those who don't have a subscription paying 99 cents.

The prices announced for Yahoo Music Unlimited are half the ones of the competitors Napster and RealNetworks which have already recorded stock decreases.

The songs are not compatible with the iPod players, so Yahoo's service is not a serious threat to Apple.

Yahoo Music Unlimited will be initially launched as beta and will only be accessible to users from the United States. The downloaded songs can be transmitted to other persons over Yahoo Messenger.

The Yahoo online radio service, Launchcast, had a huge success and the company is expecting Yahoo Music Unlimited will record the same success.