Yahoo Music revamps in uncertain times

Yahoo Music, the Internet giant's online music service, has undergone several major changes as they hope to draw more users to their struggling music products.

Yahoo drew 17 million users to its music web site in February, making it the top-ranked music site, but has struggled to monetize the service.  The new Yahoo Music will hopefully help Yahoo offer the music listeners what they want while also making money.

Yahoo users now have the ability to access both paid and free music through the same service, with Yahoo Music now introducing Apple and several other companies as online partners.  Furthermore, new "artist pages" tie Yahoo Music to Apple's iTunes, Pandora, YouTube, and several other online portals -- an important step in the company's efforts to attract new users.

The revamped Yahoo Music also gives users the opportunity to connect to Last.fm, Pandora, YouTube and other similar sites.

"Artist Pages leverages the scale of the Web and Yahoo's massive audience to create something totally new, open, social and original," according to Yahoo Music leader Michael Spiegelman.  "Artist Pages is a major game-changer for the digital music industry."

As Internet users continue to embrace the Web 2.0 world, service providers like Yahoo are being forced to adapt to new technologies to please users.  To embrace Web 2.0, Yahoo Music users now have the ability to view tour dates, purchase concert tickets, view videos and photos of their favorite artists, and more.

"We really want to focus on providing the service that's most valuable to users, and then partner with third parties to provide the entire set of music services," Spiegelman also said.

Yahoo plans to offer music tracks and additional information from at least 500,000 artists, which is around twice as many artists the previous Yahoo Music supported.  For those interested in testing out the new service, please be aware that it's still a work in progress that is far from done.

Unlike many people who have switched to Google for everything, I'm still an avid user of Yahoo's news, sports, mail and maps section.  I've also used Yahoo's music services in the past -- though became disheartened when the variety of music declined -- and have switched to Pandora.

I'm glad to see Yahoo Music undergo such drastic changes, and look forward to trying out the service in the coming weeks.