Rhapsody Replaces Yahoo Music Unlimited

Yahoo will do away with its own subscription-based music service by turning over its existing customers to Rhapsody, a long-standing competitor.

Despite its player falling onto one site’s list of “badware” on Friday, RealNetworks made a comeback on Monday with the announcement that its Rhapsody on-demand music service would be replacing Yahoo Music Unlimited. The company announced the transition on Monday, amid simultaneous reports that Microsoft was vying to purchase Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

According to USA Today, Yahoo will migrate existing customers to the new service over the coming months, but will continue to offer other services through Yahoo Music, such as music videos, Internet radio and music downloads, on its own. Existing libraries of music will simply be converted to Rhapsody libraries, and Yahoo’s pricing will temporarily be carried over during the transition period.

Although Monday’s announcement would seem to squelch reports that Yahoo Music could offer to DRM-free songs for download, that may still be possible. Rhapsody, like Yahoo Music Unlimited, is a subscription-based service that would leave room for an ala carte download business on the side, at least in theory, and both Yahoo and RealNetworks have announced their intentions to cooperate on further music download ventures in the future.

Along with the acquisition, Yahoo also revealed Monday that it had purchased FoxyTunes, a popular media bar plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer.