This article will address the topic of Yahoo! Music Radio, one of the most relevant aspects in today's society. Yahoo! Music Radio has gained great importance in recent years due to its impact in different areas, from politics and economics to culture and technology. Through this article, the various facets of Yahoo! Music Radio and its influence on our daily lives will be explored. The different perspectives around Yahoo! Music Radio will be analyzed, as well as its evolution over time. In addition, the implications of Yahoo! Music Radio in the current context, as well as its possible future projections, will be examined. In order to offer a comprehensive vision about Yahoo! Music Radio, different approaches and opinions will be considered, with the purpose of providing a broad and objective vision on this topic of great relevance today.
Developer(s) | LAUNCH Media (1999–2002) Yahoo! (2002–2009) CBS Radio (2009–2012) iHeartRadio (2012–2014) |
---|---|
Initial release | November 11, 1999 | (as LAUNCHcast)
Type | Broadcasting Internet radio |
Yahoo! Music Radio (formerly known as LAUNCHcast) was an Internet radio service. The service, which featured both an advertising supported free version and a subscription fee-based premium version, allowed users to create personalized Internet radio stations by rating songs selected by a recommender system. Users were also able to listen to music from 150 preset Internet radio stations.
The service was developed by Todd Beaupré, Jason Snyder and Jeff Boulter of LAUNCH Media and debuted on November 11, 1999. In June 2001, after the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the company faced financial difficulty and was acquired by Yahoo! for $12 million, after which it was integrated into Yahoo! Music. At that time, the service had 7.4 million users.
In December 2008, the service was integrated into CBS Radio due to a rise in royalty rates, with CBS taking full control of the service, including advertising and sales and adding compatibility with Firefox and Safari.
The service was integrated into iHeartRadio in June 2012, providing listeners exclusive access to music events such as the iHeartRadio Music Festival. The service was shut down in early 2014 without any announcement.
In January 2003, the company settled a lawsuit with Sony Music over its license covering use of Sony-owned recordings.
On April 27, 2007, Yahoo defeated Sony BMG in a copyright infringement lawsuit involving LAUNCHcast's personalization features. At issue was whether or not LAUNCHcast's "personal radio station" constitutes an "interactive" service, which requires a negotiated license agreement with a record company, or a "non-interactive" service, which requires a cheaper "compulsory license" from SoundExchange. In an "interactive" service, users can play songs on demand, but with LAUNCHcast they can only influence whether or not a particular song appears in their station.
After a six-year litigation, a jury decided that LAUNCHcast was not required to negotiate licenses as an "interactive" service, and that the service's compulsory licenses as a "non-interactive" service were sufficient. The plaintiffs appealed the decision but on August 21, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, finding that users did not have sufficient control over the playlists generated by LAUNCHcast to render it an "interactive service".