Yahoo Online Music Service

Yahoo has announced that they will also be entering the online music download market with a new subscription-based service.

Yahoo's new service will offer unlimited access to a library of 1 million songs for $6.99 a month. The new service is akin to Napster's current "To Go" service which also offers unlimited access to songs for a monthly fee. Napster's service, however, costs $14.95/month.

With both services, users have access to any of the available songs while paying the monthly access fee, but loses playback ability if the service is discontinued. Use of songs is limited to supported MP3 players and can not be burned to CD without an extra fee.

This business model differs from Apple's iTunes Music Store which "sells" individual songs for $.99 US. While there has been some speculation about Apple adopting a subscription service, publicly Steve Jobs has rejected this business model.