41. STAY AWAY FROM YAHOO MUSIC!

I foolishly joined Yahoo Music for a year. The service, AS PROMISED AND ADVERTISED, is a great deal. Unfortunately I've had recurring problems playing downloaded songs. I bought a Dell DJ30 only because it was one of only a few players compatible with YM.

At first everything worked fine. Then I got a note to upgrade to a new version of YM. After this I couldn't move any songs to the Dell because I supposedly wasn't licensed, according to the error message I kept getting. I waited a few days and it suddently started working again.

Now about 1 month later, I again am getting messages that I'm not licensed. AND I now can't play ANY of the licensed music I have downloaded to my Dell DJ. A message box says the problem MAY be that I need a new version of Windows Media Player. (?) But, downloading this will totally erase my Dell DJ according to the message. This is BS.

The other problem is you can NOT get ANY customer service from Yahoo. They hide their email like it's a national security issue.

Yahoo..if you are reading this...you need to charge more, but offer 1) a product that actually works, and 2) SOME CUSTOMER SERVICE!

The interface and concept are great, Yahoo just can't deliver it in a working manner.

I've just thrown away $60 and bought an MP3 player that was hardly my first choice.

Don't use Yahoo Music.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ken Morgan

42. STAY AWAY FROM YAHOO MUSIC!

I foolishly joined Yahoo Music for a year. The service, AS PROMISED AND ADVERTISED, is a great deal. Unfortunately I've had recurring problems playing downloaded songs. I bought a Dell DJ30 only because it was one of only a few players compatible with YM.

At first everything worked fine. Then I got a note to upgrade to a new version of YM. After this I couldn't move any songs to the Dell because I supposedly wasn't licensed, according to the error message I kept getting. I waited a few days and it suddently started working again.

Now about 1 month later, I again am getting messages that I'm not licensed. AND I now can't play ANY of the licensed music I have downloaded to my Dell DJ. A message box says the problem MAY be that I need a new version of Windows Media Player. (?) But, downloading this will totally erase my Dell DJ according to the message. This is BS.

The other problem is you can NOT get ANY customer service from Yahoo. They hide their email like it's a national security issue.

Yahoo..if you are reading this...you need to charge more, but offer 1) a product that actually works, and 2) SOME CUSTOMER SERVICE!

The interface and concept are great, Yahoo just can't deliver it in a working manner.

I've just thrown away $60 and bought an MP3 player that was hardly my first choice.

Don't use Yahoo Music.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ken Morgan

43. Where to begin? I've been on SBC/Yahoo! DSL for almost 2 years now (bought a 1 year contract the day it became available in my area) and it was great for a while. I had the high end package (1.5M+). Setup was a breeze and all was well in my world. My 1 year rolls around and I decide to drop to a slower package because very few web servers could support my speed. Once I dropped down (150k-?) I started getting disconnects. Then the software started bugging out. Yahoo! provides a highly customized version of IE that looks more like Netscape but still manages not to fix a single issue I had with the original IE. Tech support was absolutely wonderful when I was paying $60/month but now that I'm only paying $20/month I'm just not worth it to them anymore. I am a very patient person. I decide to simply uninstall the Y! software and configure my connection myself. It's all going great for a while so I decide to give them another chance. I sign up for web hosting and Music Unlimited within a day or 2 of each other and give the Y! browser another chance too. Then I notice a few things:
1) If anything, Y!'s software has gotten much worse and "upgrades" to the newest versions are pretty much mandatory.
2) There is very little opportunity to choose which components to install. I despise extra toolbars and Y! managed to tack theirs on to every single program I installed from them. Every aspect of their software comes with about 5 (or more) other programs that you may or may not be able to refuse/accept as you see fit. Also every program they offer is set to run at system startup. This can be reconfigured after installing the software by digging through the preferences once you open the program in question but the option is not available when you first install them.
3) Uninstalling any Y! program is more or less impossible.

Since this article is supposed to be about Music Unlimited, I'll give some more detail on that particular aspect...to put it bluntly the actual program resembles a mid-developement Alpha more than a Beta. Random crashes and logouts, losing my license for no apparent reason, telling me that music I requested was already on my list on another computer (I own several PC's but this is the only one with Music Unlimited even installed)...it's a very rough working draft to say the least, plus the fact that starting or closing the Music Unlimited software brings my fairly decent PC to a crawl. Sometimes the Music Unlimited program flat refuses to close and a reboot is the only way to end it. If this happens, you are informed the next time you start the program that it failed to close properly and told that it is probably due to a 3rd party plugin, not faulty Y! software.
To go into a little more detail...once I managed to install the Y! software (browser, internet protection, music unlimited) my computer freaked out and since I was unable to successfully uninstall the software I was forced to format and clean install (I use 2k so I couldn't roll-back). After getting everything running again, I decide to try just the Music Unlimited program and Messenger. They install without much of a fight and it seems to be going fine until I actally start Music Unlimited up. Even though I had just signed up a day or 2 earlier and only installed it on 1 PC, my first attempt at a login was met with an announcement that I had Music Unlimited running on too many PC's (3 to be exact) and I could not activate it on this one until I deactivated another. Since these other PC's do not exist the task would of course be impossible. I was eventually forced to close the original account (luckily it was on day 3 of the 1 free week provided) and open a second account on another ID. There is 1 fact about Y!/SBC DSL that has always confused me. When I signed up I got 1 main account and 10 sub accounts. The software knows that the accounts are all linked. When I signed up for Music Unlimited with a second account, I was informed that since I was using a sub account to the one I had originally subscribed with, I had already used my free week. That's fine, no big deal to me (even though I only got to use 3 days of that week and I only managed to download a few songs in that time due to poorly written software). What really makes me mad though is that even though the software obviously knows the accounts are linked, I cannot log in with any other account than the one that is listed on the service subscription. Even that major oversight would be acceptable except for 1 problem...you CAN NOT log in to 1 Y! program (say Music Unlimited) as 1 username and a second program (Messenger, Browser, etc.) as a different user. This is extremely annoying to me because I was forced to sign up for Music Unlimited on a secondary account and all of my Messenger contacts are on my primary account. I can listen to music or chat but can't do both at the same time.

My DSL contract is up at the end of January and I plan to move to a new location around that time so needless to say I will not renew. I have already cancelled my subscription to Music Unlimited. For some unknown reason they managed to do one thing right...I still get to use the service until my month is up (even though I won't). I will keep my web hosting because it is the only thing I have ordered from them that works as expected (Y! is actually a pretty good webhost and cheap to boot). I hate to have to be like this because Y! has so much potential. Music Unlimited is great in theory and their selection and special features like recommendations and similar artists are much needed and greatly appreciated. However these few points of light cannot hide the many glaring flaws in their software, and even worse in my opinion, their lack of support.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Mr. Mojo

44. Wow, the last few comments have been very anti-YMU so I thought I would share my own perspective. I started with Rhapsody and that was generally fine, although I was running on an ancient computer, so it was slow and it would hang 1-3 times per day.

I switched to YMU due to the price. After some install problems caused me to switch to a less ancient machine, I have been running smoothly for about a month.

I have blogged the detailed differences between Rhapsody and YMU, but on the whole I am happier with YMU (when you factor in the price).

The big caveat - I am only listening to music through my computer. I am going to try the new Sandisk M200 series players that support YMU. I expect that there will be problems with the licensing. A friend was using an iRiver with Rhapsody and he had some initial problems as well. It appears that a fairly high level of technical ability is required to work through the problems that arise with DRM.

So, the bottom line for me is:
* Subscription music is awesome
* Rhapsody was fine
* Yahoo is good enough at a great price
* Both services have challenges with DRM when used for transferring music to players

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Richard Berger

45. I am thinking about signing up for Yahoo Music Ulimited. I have one question, I have 3 Zen Micro's Can I sign up for 1 YMU account and have music sync'ed to all 3 zen micro or do I need 3 YMU Acocunts. I'd really spend 60.00 per year instead of 120.00 per year.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Mark

46. Mark:
Please take this advice with a grain of salt as I have not done it personally, but the YMU help says that you can transfer to two devices. Rhapsody allows three devices. But transferring to the portables is quite error prone (many people do eventually get it to work).

With YMU, you can only transfer from one computer - so you have to pick your "transfer computer".

Also with YMU, you can have up to three computers listening to the same subscription, although I would imagine they will close this loophole. Rhapsody allows three machines to be designated to use the account, but if you sign in on a second computer, it signs you out of the first.

Here's the help text from the Yahoo site:
"This is only applicable to Y! Music Unlimited subscription music. If your music subscription has lapsed, you will not be able to listen to your subscription music, nor will you be able to transfer it to devices. As well, subscription song files have a limit to the number of devices they can be transferred to (generally up to two devices); if you have transferred the song to the limited number of devices, you will not be able to transfer it again."

More info available at:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/music/yme/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-01.html

Enjoy,
RB

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Richard Berger

47. I got Yahoo Music for when I'm at work and loved it, that is until I tried to use it at home. I couldn't get it to work. I contacted Yahoo 3 times with no luck. I switched to Napster and no problem.
I agree the Yahoo interface is a little better, but what good is that if it won't work on all your machines.

Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc