So I'm really digging the new Yahoo subscription music service. It didn't appeal to me at $15/month for Napster but $5/month to listen to all the music I want encoded with WMA at 192 is a good deal to me. The client software is surprisingly good for a 1.0 product. The best feature is the recommendations of new music based on your ratings. You can make a personal "radio station" that can be narrowed by genre and has a user selectable mix of rated vs. unrated music. The selection of non mainstream music is surprisingly good.

I know a lot of people don't like this DRM model but I think it's great. This is a way to use the technology that wasn't possible before. I have little interest in the iTunes model where I pay $10 an album and still don't really own it.

The problem is I'm a recent Mac convert. My personal machine is a Powerbook, I use make regular use of an iPod and Airport Express. That means I'm limited to using the Yahoo service at the office. I'd love to see Apple offer a subscription service.

I thought it was a good idea at 15 dollars a month so 7 is even better.

I like the search options in the napster software better also napster seems to have more indie stuff which I like. The yahoo software is much faster and seems more solid the napster stuff seems buggy as hell.

I would really like to see emusic use this model vs the way the currently do it because I really liked their catalog.

I am guessing these services will have the same problem as emusic because for the little they charge no one can be making any money.

That's how emusic used to be unlimited mp3 downloads for 10 bucks a month and look what happened to them.

iTunes doesn't do it for me either, but Yahoo! Music isn't the answer. WMA with DRM is a non-starter for me. WMA without DRM would be mildly acceptable, but the difficulty in managing WMA metadata (the lack of cross-platform tools to edit it) would make it an absolute last resort, despite its admirable quality/bitrate performance.

These days, if an album is worth retail store prices to me, I buy the CD. If I only want a few songs, or I want the album, but not enough to pay $12-$15, I go to allofmp3.com, which lets me select the format, encoder, bitrate, etc. and I get files that play everywhere and are easy to manage.

Also, I don't think Yahoo! Music will be $5/month for very long... Suppose they jack it up? Based on a quick glance at their signup page, it looks like the type of DRM that requires an active subscription. If so, I can think of no more lucrative bait and switch than to lure a bunch of people in with $5/month unlimited, then jack up the prices. Then, as a user, you're faced with the choice between paying whatever they change the price to, or watching your entire music collection go *poof*.

Of course I would like the music to be DRM free but that ain't going to happen. If I want DRM free music then I'll buy the CD. That's the point. I don't think of the Yahoo service as owning the music or the songs being "my music collection". I think of it as a cheap way to listen to all kinds of music I wouldn't get to hear otherwise. If the service becomes too expensive or goes away I haven't lost anything. I've gotten $5/month value from exploring all the new music.

How many CD's have you bought that you didn't like? Suppose you could listen to anything you want before you decide whether it's something you want to own? $60 is about 5 CD's. I know that I buy more than 5 CD's a year that I never listen to again.

Well they went broke and the company that bought them changed it so now for 10 dollars a month you get 40 downloads. I would rather pay 15 like napster and have unlimited drm tracks that expire when the subscription is stopped. 40 tracks isn't enough when looking for new bands that is only a few albums. I want the service to find new bands I like and when I do I buy the cds.

The problem with using unlimited mp3 tracks was people would sign up for a month or two and download their entire catalog.

I can't see yahoo keeping that price forever maybe they plan on raising it after the beta is over.

Yeah, I'd rather have neither.

I could, however, go with something like "pay us $15 up front to have DRM access to all of our music, then you can get unencumbered versions for a price that comes out of that $15"

Basically, I don't mind the idea of DRM'd try-it-out music, but I don't want to pay for that. At the same time, I can understand why companies don't want to give it away for free.