Rhapsody to Replace Yahoo! Music Service

Yahoo! Music Service will be shutting its doors later this year and it's customers will transfered to Rhapsody's music service which offers that same unlimited music downloads at a higher premium.

Yahoo and Rhapsody have announced a partnership that will terminate Yahoo's service and move them to Rhapsody's music service which is run by Realnetworks Inc. and Viacom Inc. Yahoo! Music Unlimited service offered unlimited music download which are wrapped by Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM. These music downloads could be downloaded and loaded to compatible devices and it was offer for $8.99/month. The partnership will move all Yahoo! Music Unlimited Users to the Rhapsody service in the coming months and will allow users to keep their music as long as they stay with Rhapsody. Elements of the partnership are still questionable because of Microsoft recent offer to purchase Yahoo. If Microsoft succeeds in buying Yahoo, they may choose to terminate this partnership with Rhapsody and keep the Yahoo Unlimited Music user base under the Microsoft name and possibly migrate users to their Zune service. However, Rhapsody's service is higher priced than what Yahoo! has been offering and users will have to pay more once their contract term expires.