{"id":3004,"date":"2005-05-13T21:07:40","date_gmt":"2005-05-14T01:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2005\/05\/13\/more-on-yahoos-pricing-and-use-of-xs"},"modified":"2005-05-13T21:07:40","modified_gmt":"2005-05-14T01:07:40","slug":"more-on-yahoos-pricing-and-use-of-xspf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2005\/05\/13\/more-on-yahoos-pricing-and-use-of-xspf\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Yahoo!&#8217;s Pricing and Use of XSPF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1115'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In its <a href=\"http:\/\/billboard.blogs.com\/billboardpostplay\/2005\/05\/desperate_napst.html\">desperate ran<\/a>t,<br \/>\nNapster said that Yahoo! would lard the new Yahoo! Unlimited music service<br \/>\nwith advertising in order to keep the cost so low.&nbsp; Both Napster<br \/>\nand <a href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&amp;cid=581&amp;e=3&amp;u=\/nm\/20050512\/tc_nm\/media_realnetworks_dc\">Real said<\/a> that Yahoo! would not be profitable at those prices and predicted that they would eventually have to raise them.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe so, but maybe not.&nbsp; Mike McGuire, a <a href=\"http:\/\/gartnerg2.com\/site\/default.asp\">GartnerG2<\/a> analyst and Berkman Center <a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/media\/\">Digital Media Projec<\/a>t collaborator, <a href=\"http:\/\/gartnerg2.com\/na\/na-0505-0029.asp\">explains<\/a><br \/>\nhow Yahoo!&#8217;s model might be viable without relying on advertising:<br \/>\n&#8220;What Yahoo! brings to the branded online music market is obvious: 25<br \/>\nmillion unique visitors a month to the Yahoo! Music site, according to<br \/>\nComscore\/MediaMetrix&#8217;s latest data&#8230;. The company is counting on scale<br \/>\nand customer-acquisition costs.<br \/>\nYahoo!&#8217;s huge user base means it has much lower customer acquisition<br \/>\ncosts than subscription-service competitors.&#8221;&nbsp; Even so, he<br \/>\ncautions that &#8220;Whether the portable version of the subscription service<br \/>\nwill remain at<br \/>\n$6.99 a month beyond the beta period is doubtful, especially given the<br \/>\ncost of maintaining a top-flight music service.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Yahoo! Music Engine&#8217;s plug-ins feature is already having some interesting consequences &#8211; check out this <a href=\"http:\/\/plugins.yme.music.yahoo.com\/\">plug-ins page<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com\/entry\/1234000490043273\/\">Brad Hill<\/a>.&nbsp;<br \/>\nBrad writes, &#8220;It&#x2019;s nearly unbelievable. A major media company releasing<br \/>\nan open-platform product in a high-stakes indsutry, developed<br \/>\nby a team that seems to be operating with an eye-popping degree of<br \/>\nautonomy and personality.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A key component of this open platform is Yahoo!&#8217;s reliance on the <a href=\"http:\/\/xspf.org\/\">XSPF<\/a> playlist format &nbsp; Want a sense of what an open platform for playlist sharing can help bring?&nbsp; See the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fistfulayen.com\/musicblogs\/\">MusicBlogs Publisher PlugIn for the Yahoo! Music Engine<\/a>, that brings RSS and XSPF together.&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/webjay.org\/\">Webjay<\/a> also uses XSPF.&nbsp; This is just the beginning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In its desperate rant, Napster said that Yahoo! would lard the new Yahoo! Unlimited music service with advertising in order to keep the cost so low.&nbsp; Both Napster and Real said that Yahoo! would not be profitable at those prices and predicted that they would eventually have to raise them. Maybe so, but maybe not.&nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}