Petteri Pyyny
14 Sep 2004 16:53
Internet giant Yahoo! extended its reach in Net's growing multimedia market today when it announced the deal to acquire media player software house MusicMatch. The deal also puts Yahoo competing directly with likes of Apple and Microsoft in rapidly-growing legal online music business, as MusicMatch is one of the few large media player developers who have integrated their own online music store into a successful media player software, in similar fashion to the Apple's iTunes.
MusicMatch's main product is the MusicMatch Jukebox media player and the player works also as the frontend to MusicMatch's online music store that boasts a selection of 700,000 songs for $0.99 a piece. It also provides subscription service, similar to that offered by a rival online music store, Napster, for $8 a month and has already 225,000 subscribers.
Yahoo agreed to pay $160 million for the privately held MusicMatch and pays the full amount in cash. Several analysts welcomed the Yahoo's move and company's stock price in Nasdaq surged more than 5 percent after the announcement.
Source: Forbes