CBS, Yahoo Beef Up Online Music Strategy

Hoping to join Amazon and iTunes as music mavens, Yahoo and the CBS-owned Last.fm have made announcements regarding expanding and creating their own digital music services.

Last.fm announced starting today you can play any selected song on your computer for free. Previously Last.fm was solely an Internet radio website. You could select artists that you liked, and Last.fm would play like a radio station based on your music tastes.

Now, instead of hoping Last.fm will play a specific song from an artist you want you to search for a specific song and stream it up to three times on your computer. Since the music is streamed, however, it cannot be downloaded onto your PC and put onto an MP3 player. For a price, however, Last.fm will remove the three-time-a-song streaming limit. No pricing plans for the service have been announced.

Yahoo May Free Music

Though an official announcement has yet to be made, USA Today reports that Yahoo is in discussions with record labels to begin an ad-supported music service. Details are still pending as to the specifics of Yahoo's service, such as whether downloads will be free or paid, or if it will be a subscription service. Yahoo hopes to launch the service sometime later this year.

It's hard to get too excited about the Yahoo service at this point because so little is known about it. However, the prospect of a potentially free music service is an enticing one. One new service called SpiralFrog already offers "free" music downloads. But not everyone loves the service.

If Yahoo is making music free, I'm guessing it will probably be a streaming service similar to what Last.fm has just announced.

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