Hello World!

Hey everyone,

With the Fourth of July recently passed I know what you’re all thinking: what the hell is with the price of gas??!

However, a few of you might also be asking yourselves: what’s happening with Yahoo! Music?

This is a question I can answer.

This blog was started by Ian Rogers, the previous General Manager of Yahoo! Music, who recently left to become CEO of a startup, where we wish him the best of luck. Since his departure, we haven’t really been blogging much, which means we haven’t been communicating with you, our loyal readers.

Well, we’re going to change this and get back to blogging so we can let you know what we’re up to.

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Michael Spiegelman, I’ve been at Yahoo! Music since December 2003 and I’m now heading up the Music group. It’s an interesting time to be in the digital music space, as old business models crumble and new models emerge. We’re doing our part to evolve the digital music experience and develop new ways to connect people to the music they love.

In February we announced that Yahoo! was acquiring a small company called FoxyTunes. FoxyTunes has a small web app that sits in your browser and lets you remote control music listening from services such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, Pandora, Last.fm and 25 other music players. The FoxyTunes team has now become an integrated part of our group (experiencing crazy culture shock along the way…ever try to find a kosher restaurant in Santa Monica?) and is working with our other engineering teams to integrate the FoxyTunes tools with other Yahoo! products.

We’ve also been having a lot of success with our Web Media Player (which internally we fondly call Goose), the brainchild of Lucas Gonze. Our Media Applications team has been building on Lucas’ great work to improve the player and put it in the hands of some of the top bloggers in the digital music space. You can now find it at these fine blogs:

Aurgasm
Aquarium Drunkard
Gorilla Vs Bear
Large Hearted Boy
Soul Sides

Speaking of blogs, our own Yahoo! Music Blogs, which we launched in November, are now drawing an audience of over 8 million unique users per month. Woo-hoo! Apparently, there might be something to this blogging thing after all.

On the Yahoo! Music site, we’ve been launching our new music videos section, video playlisting, blogs, charts and other features of our new platform internationally. I’m pleased to announce the launch of revamped sites in Canada, the UK, Spain, France and Germany, and also the launch of our brand-new site in Mexico. We’ll be re-launching our sites in Italy and Australia, as well as our Spanish-language site, in the next few weeks.

The final thing I wanted to talk about was how we’ll be embracing Yahoo!’s new strategy of openness. Jerry Yang and Sue Decker have talked a lot about how Yahoo!’s new mission is to become the starting point for great web experiences. We’re taking this to heart, and in the coming months you’ll see us opening Yahoo! Music up, so you’ll be able to find not just content from us, but also from other great services and sites.

Well, that’s all for now, but we’ll be blogging more frequently now to keep you up to date with our doings. As always, feel free to leave comments.

Until the next time,

Michael Spiegelman
Yahoo! Music