Delicious Music. Play your bookmarks.

We’re very excited to announce that FoxyPlayer is now part of the largest social bookmarking site in the world, Delicious.

Our good friends at Delicious are providing a great place to store everything you find on the Internet and have long been committed to supporting mp3 playback. The introduction of Yahoo! Music’s FoxyPlayer extends the playback experience by allowing continuous play of multiple bookmarks as one big playlist, support for a plethora of file types, and links to get more information about the currently playing track.

To try this out, you can filter by the “system:media:audio” tag, then filter further by the type of media you’d like to hear – like the name of the artist, genre etc. The results can include podcasts, mp3, music, and a whole host of other file types. Now you can play all them all using the FoxyPlayer!

By the way, if you like to listen to music while you surf, you can launch FoxyPlayer on Delicious and control it with FoxyTunes while surfing in other tabs.

Here are a few examples of ways to listen:

http://delicious.com/tag/system:filetype:mp3+jazz+free
http://delicious.com/tag/system:media:audio+npr
http://delicious.com/tag/system:media:audio+podcast

Now it’s time to sit back, relax, and listen to your bookmarks.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

-Stephen Garcia

LAUNCHcast Powered by CBS

Hey everyone,

Today Yahoo! Music made a big announcement: we’ll be partnering with CBS Radio to offer a jointly operated radio service to our users, which will be called LAUNCHcast Radio powered by CBS.

This will replace our existing service by moving radio to the CBS Interactive platform, with CBS providing the content, radio player and advertising. Our content team will continue to program our wide array of 150 radio stations using the CBS programming tools.

Though we’re announcing this today, the first release will take place on Feb. 12th, 2009, with subsequent releases afterwards to add features and functionality.

I’d like to walk you all through the rationale for this and then talk through the changes to the product.

In the past year and a half, the cost of operating Internet radio has changed drastically. There have been a series of court decisions, one in March of 2007 and one in April of 2008 that greatly increased the cost of Internet radio, to the point where we would be losing a lot of money if we continued to operate LAUNCHcast in its current form next year.

Yahoo! has never made a lot of money from Internet radio: it’s generally been a consumer feature and not a big profit center. However, we really couldn’t afford to pay the new rates, so we therefore faced a choice: either cripple the product to greatly reduce listenership, or find a partner with strengths in radio and different economics.

CBS Radio and Yahoo! started a discussion about the future of web radio several months ago. At the time, we were very impressed by their platform. CBS has a long tradition in the radio space, and has recently invested heavily in developing a great platform for the delivery of Internet radio. They’ve improved their offering by adding Last.fm and adding it to their family of companies.

The most critical part of our discussion was to ensure that any potential partner was committed to Internet radio and its users. CBS clearly has that commitment and is in it for the long haul.

CBS also has a great understanding of how to develop an excellent radio product. They’ve taken their deep knowledge of radio and built a platform that enables sophisticated programming, and through Last.fm they have access to great personalization technology.

So how will this affect users of LAUNCHcast Radio? When we flip the switch in February, here’s what you’ll see change:
- For the first time, the new ‘LAUNCHcast powered by CBS’ player will work on Firefox and on Macs, bringing LAUNCHcast radio to all of you who don’t use Internet Explorer. Yes, this is something we’ve wanted to do for a while, and it’s finally here.
- We’ll keep programming 150 radio stations for your enjoyment. You may see the content change slightly as we adjust to the new tools and catalog, but for the most part we’ll be offering the same radio stations, which will be programmed by our team here at Yahoo! Music using the CBS tools. All of these stations will now be free.
- We’ll continue to offer artist fan radio, which plays music related to an artist that you select. This will be offered as part of the redesigned artist pages we’ll be launching early next year.
- We’re going to be phasing out LAUNCHcast Plus. For all of you subscribers, we’ll be offering refunds for the remaining length of your subscription when we make the change on February 12. We will be making all subscription stations absolutely free, and will offer all audio at the higher quality bitrate.
- The major change you’ll see is that our beloved customized LAUNCHcast Radio will be going away. We spent a long time trying to figure out how to get this to work with the CBS platform, but unfortunately it wasn’t technically feasible. I understand that many of you have invested long hours in building your radio station, but the fact is that due to the increasing rates, we can’t continue to offer this service. Your ratings will continue to be accessible and those ratings will power recommendations of songs and music videos on our homepage, as well as your personalized music video station. We’ll also be introducing some social functionality in the next few weeks which will allow you to use your ratings to share music with friends across Yahoo!. Next year, we’ll be collaborating with CBS and Last.fm to redesign a set of personalized functionality for our site, as it’s something we certainly view as very important.

So that’s what we’re up to. Please feel free to post questions in the comments or refer to our FAQs for more info. We’ll try to answer all the questions as best we can.

Thanks,

Michael Spiegelman
General Manager, Yahoo! Music

New FoxyTunes version and Planet updates

Today we’re releasing a few updates - a new version of FoxyTunes for Firefox and several enhancements to FoxyTunes Planet.

Following our mission to support any media players you might be using, the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox now supports AIMP2 and The KMPlayer media players. Stay tuned for more popular players being supported in the near future

We are also launching several enhancements on the FoxyTunes Planet website – first, there’s a whole new Yahoo! Music Videos widget, so now you have a choice between YouTube and Yahoo! Music video catalogs. The Rhapsody widget has been enhanced to play the top artist tracks right there on the page using the FoxyPlayer. We also tweaked the page layout a bit, and while we had to disable the Yahoo! Image Search and Hype Machine widgets for now, we’re definitely planning to add tons of cool new stuff to the pages in the near future. Finally, you no longer need to create an account and login to persist your widget layout and settings – so if you want to tweak anything in the new layout, feel free to do it without logging in.

Hope you like the new Foxy stuff, let us know what you think!

Search, Click Play, Hear 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

Are you awesome? Do you like music?

Are you excited about Music? Do you enjoy creating great experiences for users to enjoy?  If so, you have the opportunity to be part of the team that builds the top Music site on the internet. Email your resume to ymusic-jobs@yahoo-inc.com.

We are building Music applications such as Music Video, Internet Radio, Music Blogs, Yahoo Media Player and several other exciting applications. We’re hiring for a few positions that go a little something like this:

• Build cutting edge applications and mashups to entertain millions of users
• Develop scalable applications that services up to thousands of requests per second
• Review wireframes, design treatments and business requirements.
• Participate in design and code reviews, documentation of design, implementation of methodologies to ensure high quality software
• Utilize software engineering best practices such as source control, unit testing and continuous integration

The roles are within our Media Applications Group, working on web applications that power music experiences both on and off the Yahoo! Music site.

Continue reading Are you awesome? Do you like music?…

Yahoo! Music expands in Latin America

With summer knocking at the door, some may dream of being on an exotic beach, drinking mojitos and dancing to some Latin beats. That’s what I’m thinking of now.

If you’re sharing the same mood, now is your chance to check some Fiesta party tunes on the brand new Yahoo! Música México, the first Yahoo! Music site launched in Latin America.

Bursting with great local content, it features a partnership with MTV in a program called Blog & Rock. Users are invited to tell their stories, and the best one will be performed by a Mexican rockstar and may become the next big hit in the Latin world. How do you like that?

Yahoo! Música México has joined our worldwide music network bringing Yahoo! Music International up to 14 sites. If you feel like experiencing some global sounds, there are many ways you can enjoy and entertain yourself. Explore one of the Yahoo! Music sites in the Americas (Canada, US in Espanol, Mexico), Europe (UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy) or Asia Pacific (Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Australia).
Wondering if Enrique Iglesias is still the number one in Spain? Check their Top 100 Charts. What about the latest music trends in Taiwan… awesome! Looking for more familiar tunes? Dive into some Transcanadian music.

Yahoo! Music embraces thousands of artists and genres worldwide and serves a music community of 60 million users every month. We’ll be launching some more new international sites later this year so stay tuned for more global news, and in the meantime enjoy those worldwide beats.

ciao,

Nicola Ghezzi
Yahoo! Music

Introducing the Yahoo! Music API

If you are a developer and have ever wished to bring the Yahoo! Music experience into your site, now you can do it. Today Yahoo! have made available to the public the new Yahoo! Music API.

The Yahoo! Music API give developers and publishers open access to one of the most complete music catalog online. You can now access and browse Yahoo! Music’s vast content of high quality videos, artists and albums through charts, search, recommendations, and more.

Is music video the missing part that your audience is looking for? Here’s an example of application that you could build:

That’s a great way to captivate your users through the video playback and video stations included with the embedded player.

Integrating Yahoo! Music’s content into your site is now a simple task. Here are some basic steps to get started.

Enjoy!

Nicola Ghezzi
Yahoo! Music

Music Videos - Gettin’ Better All the Time

Over the past several months we have rolled out a number of enhancements to our music video service.

As many of you already know, we took a big step in March by moving from a pop-up video player to an embedded player. This new experience provides for more seamless playback and improved sharing features.

We’ve also introduced some other cool features and enhancements that I’d like to share with you.

Upgraded video quality:
We recently upgraded our encoding specifications and are now providing 16×9 format videos when available. These new settings look fantastic and scale very well for the ‘full screen’ mode. Here’s a capture of a new 16×9 video from the band Paramore.

Video stations:
We have a comprehensive offering of over 50 video stations that give users a one-click option to launch great laid back video experiences. These stations are editorially programmed in the same manner as their radio counterparts and include everything from Today’s Big Hits to Chill Out to 2008 Grammy Nominees. If users are more interested in new discoveries, they can easily browse all video titles in each of these stations and sort by most popular, alphabetically by artist, or by newest. We continue to offer the standard browsing menu including My Station, Top 100, New Videos, Recommended, Videos I’ve Rated, and Video Premieres.

Sharing:
The new share panel in the player enables users to easily send a link of the video, share via IM or email, or embed.

Playlists:
With the new embedded video experience, we introduced the ability for users to add videos to playlists without interrupting viewing. To date, our users have created millions of video playlists!

Catalog:
We remain focused on building the most comprehensive and highest quality music video catalog on the web as well as providing accurate data and category tags for every video in the catalog. Want to see more videos in the same category as the video you are currently watching? Simply click on any of the category links and they will take you to a page with all the videos in that category. It’s a very useful discovery tool.

Enjoy, and let us know what new music video features you want to see. More updates to come!

Thanks,

Steve C.
Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Music Unlimited Subscribers can now transfer to Rhapsody

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

Nissan Live Sets – Redesign amongst Friends

Yesterday, we launched a redesign to one of our pillar live music programs, Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music. And, it is very fitting that we did so with one of the most memorable and ‘fan’-tastic musical experiences to have taken place on our stage. For those of you who haven’t seen this ‘Hootenanny,’ 300 courageous fans joined Weezer on stage and shared their musical talents. Yes, everyone is playing an instrument! See it here.

This Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music redesign focused on blowing out several key features of the program including:

1. Integrating a clean inline video experience. You can now watch the show inline, all from the same Nissan Live Sets page
2. Bigger/fuller photo galleries: the first time we’ve been able to integrate the high resolution, professionally taken photos of the cool artists we’ve had. No more tiny pictures!
3. A re-tooled blog that leverages Y! Music’s blog platform. This improvement more cleanly integrates the program with other y! music blogs and allows us to layer in related photos, videos and other popular galleries

This has been a major collaborative effort and I hope you enjoy it.

Abraco,
bill