Yahoo! & SBC Team Up To Make Music Together for DSL Users

Red Herring reports on a Wednesday announcement that Yahoo and SBC Communications are teaming up to offer an unlimited "all-you-can-eat" music download service for a flat rate to SBC’s DSL customers. This comes one day after Verizon entered a similar partnership.

In the deal with Verizon, Yahoo is to offer its services, including music, on Verizon’s DSL network. Likewise the Yahoo/SBC deal offers the Yahoo Music Unlimited service at Yahoo’s recently finalized prices of $6.99 per month, or $4.99 per month for customers who sign up for a one-year subscription.

There is also the option to own individual songs. Subscribers can pay a fee of $0.79 per song and save it to CD or to a music player that doesn’t include digital rights management technology. If they don’t join the service, they would pay $0.99 to download a song. The difference between paying $0.79-$0.99 per song as opposed to relying on the unlimited service comes down to owning the song rather than renting it. "If you let your subscription lapse, it goes away,” said Yahoo spokesperson Nicole Leverich. "It makes a lot of sense for consumers. There are a lot of songs on the radio that I like, but I’m not sure I have the burning desire to own them. I can check out different types of artists or music, and then I can download the entire song or album."

These two deals allow Yahoo to partner with companies that have a direct pipeline into the homes and will likely benefit both partners in that SBC has more to offer their customers and Yahoo expands the reach of their music download service. A similar deal was made between Napster and Bellsouth earlier this month. It is likely that we will continue to see these types of partnerships being formed as the online digital music industry continues to grow.