FaLaLaLaLa

There are lots of competing music services these days–Rhapsody, Napster, iTunes. But The King recommends the new Yahoo! Unlimited music service.

It has taken a few years for major media companies to catch on to the whole digital revolution in music. It’s been almost an eternity (in Interney years) since the lawless early days of Napster, Limewire, AudioGalaxy, etc. Obviously Apple jumpstarted the revolution with iTunes and the others have been scrambling to get in the game. Everybody is still trying to figure out what model of delivery/pricing is going to work. And, it seems, that the public can be the beneficiaries of this competition.

The main services are fairly similar in many ways, but after doing some testing I decided to subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Here are the reasons:

• Price: For a limited time the monthly cost for membership in Y!MU is $5/month. This compares with $15/month currently offered by Rhapsody and Napster for more or less the same services. I don’t mind saving $10/month.
• Extensibility: Basically, Yahoo! is allowing third party plug-ins to add functionality to the software. I like that spirit of supporting cooperation and creativity with customers and programmers. I like open source and this leans in that direction.
• Sharing: You can share tunes/playlists/etc. with Yahoo! Messenger. You can also publish playlists via RSS with the Music Blogs Publisher plugin. If you’ve been around FaLaLaLaLa for any length of time, you know I like the community aspect of the music.

The selection is really good (though not perfect). But I love the idea of having access to over a million albums whenever I want them. Do I want to hear Rush’s ? Pop it up and bask in the nostalgia. How about the newest one from Coldplay? There it is. If I like it I can pay 79 cents/song to own it (compared to 99 cents for iTunes and the others).

One of the great things about these services (Rhapsody, Napster-To-Go, Y!MU) is that you can even load the music on your MP3 player and take it with you. As much as you want–without paying to own the albums. All you need is a compatible player, the choices of which are limited for the moment will assuredly grow.

"Well, what about Christmas music?" you ask. The selection is really quite good. There are quite a few albums that I’ve always wanted to hear that I have checked out–take a listen to The Do-Re-Mi Children’s chorus, which has a great old record on there. I’ll be making some playlists to post that give an example of the FaLaLaLaLa-type of music they carry.

Anyway, I highly recommend Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Go take a free test-drive and see what you think.

The King of Jingaling