Yahoo Music Store:

[LonghornXP]

Yahoo launched a beta of their new music store and so far it works very well. It has over one million songs listed but from what I've found they still have buy only tracks which seem to be the same ones that Napster has as buy only. Now finding music is pretty hard unless you seach for the artist and select specific albums because it doesn't let you view a list of all songs from this artist.

Now if you order a monthly plan you can download songs that you can keep for 79 cents a song while its 99 cents a song if you don't have a subscription plan.

Now what I love about this service and I've tested with my iRiver H320 to see if its true and its true indeed in that it supports the new Microsoft Janus DRM so you can transfer any downloadable song as part of your subscription without having to pay per track. Now if you cancel your subscription the songs won't play anymore.

Also all subscription plans include Launchcast Plus radio stations.

Here is the kicker below.

Month to month plans cost 6.99/month and they have an annual plan that costs about 60 bucks a year or 4.99/month.

So for 60 bucks a year you can get unlimited streams and downloads (except for buy only songs which are the same as Napster) plus unlimited transfer of downloaded songs to a supported portable player without having to pay per song plus launchcast plus. That to me is a very good deal IMO.

Also all tracks are in WMA 10 DRM format encoded in 192Kbps. I like the 192Kbps whereas other stores like Apples iTunes and Napster have 128Kbps encoded files.

I hope this helps you out. Also anyone is the US can get a free 7 day trial of all features and you can cancel without calling Yahoo by clicking on my account and clicking on my premium subscriptions which gives you the option to click cancel.

Also if you get the one year plan its final and you can't get anything back via pro-rate.

Edit...the link for the Yahoo music store is below.

http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/

Edit again. Please note that you can download any song that you can keep forever for 79 cents a song even without a subscription plan. I'm sorry for the error above where I stated that customers without a subscription plan would pay 99 cents a song. Again customers without a subscription plan "CAN" download songs for 79 cents each.

 

[korsjs]

i am glad i am not hooked on these music plans like some are. they can really add up after a while.

 

[LonghornXP]

i am glad i am not hooked on these music plans like some are. they can really add up after a while.

You don't want any idea how much I spend at Columbia House between music and DVDs.

If you know about Columbia House bonus points just figure out how much I had to spend to get my 1,216 bonus points.

The more I think about it I might save massive amounts of money between Yahoo Music Unlimited and Netflix. But for some reason I lean more towards buying the DVDs and music I want all at Columbia House Music Club but I do tend to dive into the Columbia House DVD club. Now when I think Best Buy had all the Fox series DVDs on sale for about 20 bucks each I think I spend almost 200 bucks. Between all seasons of 24 and TruCalling among other things it was a great deal. Maybe that was Costco but either way it was a great deal wherever it was.

Oh and those damn SACD, DVD-A and DualDiscs have been bleeding me dry these last few weeks.

Now after saying all this I now want to go and buy something else. I think I'm an addict but I'll always deny it.

 

[korsjs]

i love netflix.

 

[Stargazer]

That is a good deal for those that love music. An annual subscription is the price of 5 cd's or the monthly cost is half the price of a cd. You could load up a bunch of music and play the songs while your on the road. Thats about half the cost of satellite radio.

 

[LonghornXP]

Heck I just noticed that BMG Music just bought Columbia House so its only a matter of time for something great to be ripped to sh*t now. Can't they just leave something alone that works. Maybe they will keep it the same but I'm not counting on it. Heck the day BMG Music screws it up is the day I start to pirate music.