Yahoo Music signs on Rhapsody for its subscription services

With Napster as its only remaining competition, the music subscription field just got a little bit smaller. Yahoo announced Monday that it will be shifting away from its music download program. In its place, the company has signed on with Rhapsody America.

"By partnering with Yahoo, we are able to instantly extend Rhapsody's 'jukebox in the sky' experience to one of the biggest music-seeking audiences on the web," said RealNetworks chief executive Rob Glaser to the AFP.

The partnership will eventually incorporate Rhapsody into the Yahoo Music site, which boasted 23 million visitors before the switch. Apparently the overlying issue was very few of these visitors would actually subscribe to Yahoo’s Unlimited services, which allows listeners to download as many songs as they like. Yahoo plans to promote Rhapsody solely on the site, hoping that RealNetwork’s former achievement will transition into a successful partnership.

Current Yahoo Unlimited subscribers will continue to pay the normal rate, for a while at least, until they are eventually phased into becoming Rhapsody subscribers. Rhapsody memberships start at $12.99 a month, while Yahoo was only charging $8.99 per month, or $5.99 if a member paid for the entire year at once. Once the switch is final, it will cost $14.99 for a Rhapsody To Go and $12.99 for the Rhapsody Unlimited membership, which is browser only.

This shift in responsibility will allow Yahoo to focus more on the content of its site, while capitalizing on Rhapsody’s already large subscription base. Yahoo’s profits have been on the decline to the point that recently Microsoft made them an unsolicited merger offer in the neighborhood of $44 billion.

Beyond the partnership with Rhapsody, Yahoo has been rumored to be shopping FoxyTunes, a widget that allows users to effectively search for music and lyrics. This would dovetail nicely with Yahoo’s hopes of becoming the go-to resource for music lovers on the web.

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