Yahoo is buying online jukebox provider Musicmatch for $160-million in a deal designed to broaden the internet giant’s appeal with the growing audience of consumers who buy songs off the web.
The all-cash acquisition, announced on Tuesday, gives Sunnyvale-based Yahoo a major drawing card as it competes against the likes of Apple Computer, RealNetworks and Napster in the rapidly growing field of digital music management.
”This really rounds out everything we do in music,” Dave Goldberg, general manager of Yahoo’s music division, said during an interview on Tuesday.
”We want to offer users a way to interact with digital music in any way that they want.”
San Diego-based Musicmatch will provide Yahoo with two features that it doesn’t currently offer — an online music store that sells individual songs for 99 cents apiece and a popular software program that helps manage digital music on computer desktops.
Musicmatch’s digital jukebox, available in 10 languages, includes 700 000 songs. Besides letting consumers download songs a la carte, Musicmatch sells an $8-per-month subscription services that lets customers listen to any song in the library at any time on the internet. About 225 000 subscribers pay for Musicmatch’s unlimited access service.
Yahoo’s musical hub right now is an online radio service that’s offered for free.
The company expects its music audience to climb from about 12,9-million listeners today to 23,9-million after the Musicmatch acquisition is completed during the final three months of the year.
Founded in 1997, Musicmatch has about 170 employees. Yahoo hasn’t determined the fate of all the workers, Goldberg said on Tuesday, but the company expects to retain an office in San Diego.
Already the web’s most popular destination, Yahoo is counting on Musicmatch’s appeal to attract new visitors and persuade existing users to remain on the site longer. If Yahoo achieves that goal, it will make its site even more attractive to online advertising. – Sapa-AP