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Hi everyone, or actually just you Canadians… Last week we launched a special promotion for Rogers customers (which I hear is pretty much all you guys up North). If you sign up for Yahoo! Music Unlimited with your Rogers Yahoo! ID, you’ll get your first 30 days free! If you have a compatible portable device and want to take your music to go, no worries…you can get 30 days of the To Go service free too! Just go to http://ca.music.yahoo.com/unlimited/rogers, sign in with your Rogers Yahoo! ID and click on Get It Now! For the To Go service, go here: http://ca.music.yahoo.com/unlimited/rogers/togo.

Since it probably won’t take the whole 30 days to convince you what a great music service this is, I’d like to give you something else to do for your first 30 days. Y! Music Unlimited is my favorite tool to discover new music (and I’m not just saying that because I work here). I challenge you to find as much new music as you can in 30 days using a just a few simple techniques (do I sound like an infomercial yet?).

US subscribers: even though you can’t get this Rogers promo, you can still play along

1. Start by rating a bunch of your favorite artists, albums and songs (The more you rate, the better the results).
2. Once you feel like you’ve rated enough, go to the Y! Unlimited homepage and click “more new releases.”
3. Next, drag a bunch of the recommended albums into the “Now Playing” playlist section to the right.
4. Click shuffle and then play.
5. Now just sit back, relax and discover.

You may end up skipping a few, but you’ll also come across some cool new stuff you probably wouldn’t have heard otherwise. While writing this blog, I discovered The Classic Crime and Amusement Parks on Fire. I can’t guarantee these bands are cleared for our Canadian catalog, but there’s no shortage of music out there and if I was able to find two new bands I like in just a few minutes, imagine what you can do with 30 days…30 FREE days thanks to Rogers and Yahoo! Music Canada! So act now! This offer won’t last forever. (Hmm, maybe an Y! Music infomercial isn’t such a bad idea?)

David Warmerdam
Yahoo! Music

For the past few months, we have been working closely with our friends at Rhapsody to bring Yahoo! Music users some great new features powered by Rhapsody’s critically acclaimed digital music service. I’m proud to announce that we are now able to bring the full Rhapsody subscription experience to our Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscribers. Subscribers can now transfer their Yahoo! Music Unlimited accounts, libraries and playlists to Rhapsody and get instant access to their huge catalog of millions of songs. We believe the Rhapsody subscription service is the best on the web, and with the recent launch of their new mp3 store, they just got a lot better. We couldn’t think of a better home for our existing subscribers and we hope they’ll love the Rhapsody service as much as we do.

A lot of work was done under the hood to make the transfer from Yahoo! Music Unlimited to Rhapsody simple and secure. After a few quick steps, Rhapsody will pick up your subscription account information and continue your service with the same billing cycle and price you had with Yahoo! Music Unlimited. If you have a Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription, go to http://transfer.music.yahoo.com and sign in to get started. Only Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscribers can transfer their accounts to Rhapsody. If you’re not a subscriber and are interested in trying the Rhapsody service, you can check it out for free here. For more information and frequently asked questions about the transfer process, check out our help pages.

We sincerely appreciate the support of our Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscribers during its limited run. While the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service may be going away, the Yahoo! Music and Rhapsody partnership has just begun. We’re working on some incredibly exciting stuff and hope you’ll enjoy the new features we’ll be releasing in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Dave Warmerdam
Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Search now offers full song playback directly from the Search results page for thousands of popular artists and songs.

In conjunction with Yahoo! Music’s new partnership with Rhapsody, we are pleased to announce the recent rollout of several improvements to Yahoo! Search’s music artist “WOW” shortcut originally launched in the Fall of 2007.

Now, in addition to gaining access to all of the artist background that you could before, you can also play up to 25 full songs a month, as opposed to the 30-second samples from before. And, by tapping into the vast catalog of songs available on Rhapsody, we’ve expanded the number of audio files that are available for playback and increased the number of tracks in the shortcut from three songs to four. If you want to look over a greater list of songs, you can now link directly to Yahoo! Music right from the shortcuts; full song playback will soon be enabled in Yahoo! Music as well, so stay tuned.

Yahoo! Search is using the FoxyPlayer (formerly known as the Yahoo! Media Player) to power the new Search experience. The player is easy-to-use, offers full functionality for song playback, and includes an expandable playlist tab. Users can continue browsing the results page while the player is in use, as search results will continue to scroll while the player stays in place near the bottom of the browser window. The player can be turned off at any time with a single click, or by simply navigating away from the Search results page. Try it out with a few of my favorites or go to Yahoo! Search and search for your own.

Pink Floyd
Johnny Cash
The Mars Volta

There’s no need to sign in to get your 25 full length streams. Just click a play button and the full length track will start playing. If you listen to all 25 songs before your 30 day period is up, you’ll hear 30 second samples until 30 days have passed from the time you first clicked play. If you are already a Rhapsody Unlimited subscriber, you can listen to an unlimited number of songs through the FoxyPlayer. Just click the “powered by Rhapsody” logo in the player and click the link to sign in on the next page.

We at Yahoo! Music are pleased to have helped Yahoo! Search become the first major Search engine to offer full-song playback directly from the Search results page. We are confident our users will appreciate the enhancements we’ve made to the FoxyPlayer and music artist WOW shortcuts. Keep an eye out for more Rhapsody-related releases down the road, as we are planning several additional updates to showcase even more of Rhapsody’s deep music catalog in the near future.

For more information on our partnership with Rhapsody and how the FoxyPlayer works with Yahoo! Search, check out our help page.

Dave Warmerdam
Yahoo! Music

Hi all,

We’re proud to announce that the new LAUNCHcast powered by CBS Radio is now live! Check it out here: http://new.music.yahoo.com/launchcast.


Or just open up Yahoo! Instant Messenger and start the LAUNCHcast plug-in.



For the first time in Yahoo! Music history, you can now listen to LAUNCHcast on Firefox and on a Mac! The Yahoo! Music team is still programming all your favorite stations and now you can also choose from a variety of music, sports, news and talk programming from CBS Radio’s station line-up. We’re very excited about our partnership with CBS and will continue to work together to make LAUNCHcast even better, so stay tuned.

In addition to the new LAUNCHcast Radio, we also released a new page where you can see all of the songs you’ve rated on Yahoo! Music. Check it out here. You can also play many of your songs on-demand thanks to our partnership with Rhapsody.



We know a lot of you were fans of your customized My Station, and while My Station is no longer available, we are still committed to creating a personalized experience for you on Yahoo! Music (Read Michael’s post for the rationale behind the discontinuation of customized radio). Your ratings will still be used to power the recommendations provided to you on our site. You can play your recommendations on-demand from our recommendations page.



We also offer a personalized music video station that is based on your ratings as well. Check out your video station here.



Look for the “My Music” tab in the main navigation bar on Yahoo! Music to see all the stuff related to your music preferences.



We will continue to work on new features that take advantage of your ratings so we encourage you to keep rating music to personalize our site to your unique musical tastes. Please note, the songs you rate in the new LAUNCHcast players are not saved to your Yahoo! Music profile. We’ll be working with CBS to incorporate radio ratings from the new player into your profile in the future.

That’s it for now. Please check out our frequently asked questions for additional information about the new LAUNCHcast service. If you have questions about the new player, check out our help page here.

Thanks
–Dave
Yahoo! Music

We’re proud to announce that you can now get all of your favorite radio stations through a free app for the Apple® iPhone™ and iPod Touch. The amazing team at CBS RADIO crammed a lot of great features into the Yahoo! Music app so that you will never be without your favorite music when you’re on the go. Here are just a few of the great features included:

• Browse through 20+ genres
• Skip up to six songs an hour
• Browse stations by genre or find local stations ‘near you’ utilizing GPS
• Share stations with friends
• Browse your listening history or recently played stations
• Buy albums/songs via iTunes
• Listen to 1010WINS, KROQ, WFAN and more than a hundred other CBS RADIO stations in addition to Yahoo! Music’s 150 music stations
• Add presets for instant access to your favorite stations

We’re extremely excited about the new Yahoo! Music iPhone App and think you will be too. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, download the app from iTunes now.

For more information about the new Yahoo! Music App powered by CBS RADIO, click here.

Stay tuned for more great products and features coming from Yahoo! Music and our friends at CBS RADIO.

Dave Warmerdam
Yahoo! Music