Music rental service is weird and still not ready for prime time.
Written: Aug 05 '05 (Updated Nov 27 '05)
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Yahoo’s Y!Unlimited music browse/rent/buy service is a mix of good and bad. The free music engine has some interesting integration features that make the whole music experience interesting and kinda fun. However, certain other features, or lack thereof, make the service’s significance questionable. Although I have only tested this service for a couple months and have not tested any other service, I will share a little bit of my experience. I think it will become apparent why I decided to quit the service.
EXPLORING IS FUN While playing with the radio feature (there are dozens of different types of “stations,” I recognized a particular reggae song which I hadn’t heard for years. I clicked on the artist, Shabba Ranks, and I was “transferred” to the Y!Unlimited page, which showed me several of the artist’s albums. I clicked on the “play” button of one of the albums and liked what I heard. So I started downloading the songs to my hd, in my special folder that has all my other downloaded or ripped songs, legal or otherwise. As the songs from the Shabba Ranks album were downloading, I clicked on the “Create playlist of similar artists” buttons. Instantly, I had a playlist that I could save, entitled “like Shabba Ranks.” The songs and artists were actually closely related although I couldn’t figure out how a few, like Quincy Jones and LL Cool J, made it to the list. [I think that the first 50 songs on the list are related, then after that they seem pretty disconnected.] On any song on the list you can right click and it gives you about 10 options for that particular song. One can keep exploring in such a way, or of course perform a specific search for an artist, song, or album. I found the exploring feature of the service to be the most rewarding and fun.
MUSIC QUALITY For me, both the streaming and the downloading of the music were fairly quick (I have about 1.3K mbps DSL service). The music sounds much better once you have downloaded it to your hard drive than when it is being streamed, especially if you later listen to them on Realplayer, not on Yahoo’s beta music engine (which badly needs an equalizer).
TO RENT OR TO BUY? The rental process seems weird though. If I download all these songs, albums, etc., without buying them, I can only play them on my computer (or I guess have them shared by other people who also have the subscription?), or upload them onto a relatively few mp3 players (it requires special software to read the copy-protected songs, which, I'm told by Yahoo, is--or is not--supplied by the mp3 maker). I cannot, however, burn them onto a CD to play in my car or my living room. Also, if I quit the service, the songs become unplayable after a short time. [This is not noticeably written anywhere in Yahoo’s literature. I heard about it from some of the reviews I’ve read.]
PROBLEMS The songs I did buy have for some reason not been able to play on my mp3 player (a 1gb Creative Muvo), nor have I been able to burn them onto a cd. After many e-mails to Yahoo Music's service and receiving obviously scripted replies that did not resolve the problem, I had to quit the service.
WORTH IT? So is it worth $15 a month? Maybe. For a very cool way of browsing for songs that you might eventually buy for $.79 each [or maybe browse for and then download from a P2P program, hint hint hint], or for researching various artists, etc., in many different and unique ways, it may be worth it. But if you keep the rental service, and if you download the stuff onto your hd, you’ll may be more likely to never leave the service in order to preserve your downloaded (rented) copy-righted music. For example, if I have 500 “rented” songs on my hd, which I’ve spent countless hours downloading and organizing, I’ll be less inclined to cancel the service if I someday want to switch to a better or cheaper service. Why? Because the “rented” music will be vaporized if it’s not periodically "checked-in" with the Yahoo service. All that time and effort wasted. That seems to be a real “gotcha” that you have to consider. [I have quit the service, for reasons stated above. I have a bunch of music that I downloaded that will soon be inoperable; I have to admit I'm kind of depressed by it.]
So, if you like to listen to fairly good quality music on your computer (perhaps used as a hookup to your main sound system), and/or enjoy the cool research capabilities of the service, then it may be well worth checking out. You do have a 7 day period to test and cancel, so what the heck?
MY ADVICE Another option would be to check out the unlimited radio service, which is cheaper. If you found a song you liked, you could switch over to the Music Unlimited page (with just a click) and either buy it for $.99, or search other songs like it and listen to 30 second segments of each song to see if you liked them. Just remember that the songs you do buy might not work on your mp3s or burnable cds as they did in my case. That was my main reason for dropping the service.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Location: Napa, CA
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 2 members
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