Yahoo! has announced the beta availability of it's new music download service, and in doing so is looking likely to start a price war.
Yahoo! Music Unlimited is available now for an annual price of $59.98, which works out at $4.99 a month. For that users are able to listen to any of Yahoo's music tracks from a catalogue of over one million.
They can also transfer these tracks to a portable media device, as long as it is compatible with the service. Currently only devices supporting the secure windows media audio format can be used, so that's the iPod out of the window.
As well as the yearly subscription offering, users can also purchase music tracks from Yahoo! Music for $0.79 if they are already a subscriber to the Yahoo! Music service. Non-subscribers pay $0.99 per track.
The new service is also coupled to the Yahoo! Messenger program, and users of both can see what their friends are listening to as well as what songs they have on their hard drives. Certainly an interesting social twist to the usual offering.
Comparing the Yahoo! price of $4.99 a month to Real's offerings which range from $10 - $15 a month, and it is clear that Yahoo! are not afraid to stir things up a little in the market. The only question is, given the Apple stranglehold on the market, are there enough users of compatible devices out there to make this a worthwhile offering?
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