LAUNCHcast
Encyclopedia
Yahoo! Music Radio is an Internet radio
service offered by CBS Radio
through Yahoo! Music
. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media
, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! in October, 2001. LAUNCHcast combined with CBS Radio
beginning on February 16, 2009.
s of songs tailored to their musical tastes.
To create a personal station, users rated music on a 4-star or 100-point (depending on one's preference) scale. The service used those ratings to create a personal station of songs based on a user's favorite genres, artists, albums, and songs. The generated playlist contained a combination of rated and recommended songs. The ratio of rated/recommended songs could be specified by each user, but by default it was 50/50.
A recommendation engine suggested songs that might have matched a user's particular musical taste according to the following similarity criteria:
Users were not required to participate in the ratings system to listen to music. Pre-programmed stations based on theme, genre, or artist were available throughout the Yahoo! Music
website.
Music video
s could also be rated, allowing users to create personal music video channels as well. For legal reasons, specific songs could not be played whenever one wished. However, videos could be. The service could generate a personal video channel based on a single selection.
Users also have the option to turn off explicit lyrics
while listening to their customized stations.
When LAUNCHcast plus was implemented in 2003, music was available for streaming for free at "Low" or "Medium" quality; although in 2007, these were combined into "Standard".
Between tracks, free accounts would hear commercial advertising
for the Yahoo! service and its partners and affiliates. The advertisements were generally 30 seconds.
In 2007 Yahoo! added permanent banner ads to the LAUNCHcast player. Because Launchcast was only compatible with Internet Explorer
, which charges for its banner ad blocker, users must either tolerate the banner ads or pay to block them. An alternative was to use the Yahoo! Music Engine, which was called Jukebox in version 2 of the same software. The Jukebox was unable to stream music anymore following September 2008, although it remained available for download well into the following year.
Limited skipping was available, at up to 5 skips per hour. Previously, banning a song skipped the song automatically, but this was removed. If the skips were not used in the previous hour, they did not roll over
.
Free accounts were limited to playing up to 1000 songs/mo (up to 120,000/yr) without any special restrictions. A song could be skipped to bypass an undesired track, but skipped songs counted against the monthly allowance. If a free account user exceeds the monthly limit, the user would no longer be able to listen to LAUNCHcast radio for the remainder of the month, although they could listen to their personal station with no skips. Like skips, songs did not roll over to the next month. This won't be the case when LAUNCHcast is powered by CBS as it will provide unlimited listening.
Free users had access to only specific stations labeled "free". Such stations had a yellow headphones icon whereas premium stations had a blue plus icon.
Pausing was only possible after 30 seconds into the song, although a song could be skipped before the 30 seconds by pressing "stop" and then starting the station again.
) such as Verizon Yahoo!
online
services. In addition to the features offered by the free account, LAUNCHcast Plus users received the following additional benefits:
LAUNCHcast Plus was only offered in the US and Canada through Yahoo. On November 2, 2008, Verizon Yahoo! announced via e-mail that certain services would be discontinued including LAUNCHcast Plus. In an e-mail delivered in January 2009, Yahoo states "the LAUNCHcast Plus premium service will be closing on February 12, 2009.". LAUNCHcast Plus was available to AT&T and Verizon subscribers at no charge previously.
Listeners are allowed to use the out-of-five rating feature that influences the stations. While banning a song entirely is impossible, giving a song a one-star rating will have it played very rarely. The rating tool was discontinued from the Yahoo! Music Radio player as of September 21 for a time until it was restored on November 2. Ratings in the new player are not yet be saved back into Yahoo! users listings, so until Yahoo! Music and CBS Radio associate radio ratings with their profiles, Yahoo! encourages users to rate songs, artists, and albums throughout their site as well as through their recommendations based on their tastes, though there is currently little benefit to the listener in doing so. As previously, play-on-demand is not provided, as with rewind, playback, and fast-forward.
Many ads can be skipped. However, some cannot and many disable all buttons, forcing the listener to hear the ad before any music is played. Ads which can be skipped have no label or video. However, skipping ads accounts toward the hourly skip limit. Ads disabling all buttons are, as of March 2009, advertising hair products. Such ads often play upon the player's launch, and some of them have a video, which can cause problems do to increased memory usage. An occasional Nesquik ad disables the pause and skip buttons, but the channel can be changed. Refreshing the web page will generally work to skip adds.
As with the old service, unused skips do not roll-over.
For the first time, LAUNCHcast powered by CBS Radio will also be available to Firefox and Safari users. It is also available as an app on the iPhone
.
The fan radio feature has returned to LAUNCHcast 5 months after CBS' takeover. Listeners can access the fan stations in the artist page by clicking on the "Artist Radio" link that corresponds with the artist/group. They also have the option to type in their favorite artist in the player itself.
Unlike its previous service, Yahoo! Radio by CBS does not have the option for users to turn off explicit lyrics. Although a hard rock
or a hip-hop station may have edited content, some explicit songs maybe mixed in there. The user must either tolerate such raw language, skip the song, or change the station.
Since the merger, the LAUNCHcast branding has slowly diminished, although LAUNCHcast was still verbally mentioned during some of their commercial breaks until March 2010.
On February 4, 2010, Yahoo! Music Radio banned users outside the U.S. from streaming online radio. An error message points to Last FM. "We're sorry, this station is unavailable from your current location. Instead, enjoy listening to...."
As of July 2011, many Yahoo users are reporting that the LAUNCHcast plugin for Yahoo! Messenger no longer works. User attempts to contact customer service have been unsuccessful.
The LAUNCHcast Plus premium service was widely available in the United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom it was restricted to BT Yahoo! Internet customers.
In Canada, LAUNCHcast and LAUNCHcast Plus was dismantled altogether as of April 15, 2009. In Australia, their LAUNCHcast service was rebranded "Yahoo! Music Radio" until they dismantled it on July 7, 2009. Many other countries followed suit prior to the relaunch of Yahoo! Music worldwide sites.
's Windows Media Player
9.0 or higher to function, although it could not be streamed from the Windows Media Player itself. Before the merger with CBS Radio, LAUNCHcast only worked with Microsoft's Internet Explorer
6.0 and up web browser
with Flash 6.0 or higher, and in Yahoo!'s Messenger
and Music Engine programs on the Microsoft Windows
operating system
98, ME, 2000 Professional, XP (Home and Professional). LAUNCHcast did not load properly using a Firefox web browser. According to Yahoo!, the LAUNCHcast music player was not compatible with the Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, however as of February 16, 2009; this may not be the case. Yahoo! stated that following CBS's acquisition, loading the player in Firefox may become possible.
Since the relaunch of LAUNCHcast by CBS, users are only required to download the latest Flash Player plug-in (currently Version 10). See external links (below) for Yahoo's help page on system requirements.
lawsuit involving LAUNCHcast's personalization features. At issue was whether or not LAUNCHcast's "personal radio station" constitutes an "interactive" service, which requires a negotiated license agreement with a record company, or a "non-interactive" service, which requires a cheaper "compulsory license" from SoundExchange
. In an "interactive" service, users can play songs on demand, but with LAUNCHcast they can only influence whether or not a particular song appears in their station.
After a six-year litigation, a jury decided that LAUNCHcast was not required to negotiate licenses as an "interactive" service, and that the service's compulsory licenses as a "non-interactive" service were sufficient. The plaintiffs appealed the decision but on August 21, 2009 the United States Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, finding that users did not have sufficient control over the playlists generated by LAUNCHcast to render it an "interactive service".
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
service offered by CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
through Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music, owned by Yahoo!, is the provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming...
. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media
LAUNCH Media
LAUNCH Media is a Santa Monica-based media company that created LAUNCH.com, an online music site, and LAUNCH , a magazine issued both in print and as a CD-ROM disk magazine. LAUNCH Media was acquired by Yahoo! for US$12 million in 2001...
, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! in October, 2001. LAUNCHcast combined with CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
beginning on February 16, 2009.
2001- 2009: LAUNCHcast powered by Yahoo! Music
LAUNCHcast allowed users to create personal radio stations or playlistPlaylist
In its most general form, a playlist is simply a list of songs. They can be played in sequential or shuffled order. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of radio broadcasting and personal computers.-In radio:...
s of songs tailored to their musical tastes.
A recommendation engine suggested songs that might have matched a user's particular musical taste according to the following similarity criteria:
- Songs from the same artist
- Songs from the same album
- Songs from the same genre
- Songs recommended by users with similar musical tastes
- Songs recommended by Yahoo!
Users were not required to participate in the ratings system to listen to music. Pre-programmed stations based on theme, genre, or artist were available throughout the Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music, owned by Yahoo!, is the provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming...
website.
Music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
s could also be rated, allowing users to create personal music video channels as well. For legal reasons, specific songs could not be played whenever one wished. However, videos could be. The service could generate a personal video channel based on a single selection.
Users also have the option to turn off explicit lyrics
Parental Advisory
Parental Advisory is a message affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America to audio and recordings in the United States containing excessive use of profane language and/or sexual references. Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents...
while listening to their customized stations.
Free accounts
Users could share their personal stations publicly and listen to other users' stations.When LAUNCHcast plus was implemented in 2003, music was available for streaming for free at "Low" or "Medium" quality; although in 2007, these were combined into "Standard".
Between tracks, free accounts would hear commercial advertising
Radio commercial
Commercial radio stations make most of their revenue selling “airtime” to advertisers. Of total media expenditures, radio accounts for 6.9%. Radio advertisements or “spots” are available when a business or service provides valuable consideration, usually cash, in exchange for the station airing...
for the Yahoo! service and its partners and affiliates. The advertisements were generally 30 seconds.
In 2007 Yahoo! added permanent banner ads to the LAUNCHcast player. Because Launchcast was only compatible with Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
, which charges for its banner ad blocker, users must either tolerate the banner ads or pay to block them. An alternative was to use the Yahoo! Music Engine, which was called Jukebox in version 2 of the same software. The Jukebox was unable to stream music anymore following September 2008, although it remained available for download well into the following year.
Limited skipping was available, at up to 5 skips per hour. Previously, banning a song skipped the song automatically, but this was removed. If the skips were not used in the previous hour, they did not roll over
Rollover
A rollover is a type of vehicle accident in which a vehicle tips over onto its side or roof. The most common cause of a rollover is traveling too fast while turning.- Dynamics :Vehicles can roll over in several ways...
.
Free accounts were limited to playing up to 1000 songs/mo (up to 120,000/yr) without any special restrictions. A song could be skipped to bypass an undesired track, but skipped songs counted against the monthly allowance. If a free account user exceeds the monthly limit, the user would no longer be able to listen to LAUNCHcast radio for the remainder of the month, although they could listen to their personal station with no skips. Like skips, songs did not roll over to the next month. This won't be the case when LAUNCHcast is powered by CBS as it will provide unlimited listening.
Free users had access to only specific stations labeled "free". Such stations had a yellow headphones icon whereas premium stations had a blue plus icon.
Pausing was only possible after 30 seconds into the song, although a song could be skipped before the 30 seconds by pressing "stop" and then starting the station again.
LAUNCHcast Plus
In early 2003, Yahoo! has introduced a premium version of the LAUNCHcast service called LAUNCHcast Plus. Some users subscribed to this service on a monthly ($3.99/mo [$47.88/yr]) or annual basis ($35.88/yr [$2.99/mo]), or it came as bundled software from some ISPs (included in pricePrice
-Definition:In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.In modern economies, prices are generally expressed in units of some form of currency...
) such as Verizon Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
online
ONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
services. In addition to the features offered by the free account, LAUNCHcast Plus users received the following additional benefits:
- "High" quality sound (CD-quality)
- No commercials or banner ads
- Access to all LAUNCHcast pre-programmed stations
- Unlimited skipping
- Unlimited monthly listening
- Access to all artists, songs, and albums (subject to licensing restrictions by country)
- The ability to designate other user's stations as "influencers" of one's own personal radio station
- The ability to create "moods" (genre-based subsets of a user's personal radio station)
- Pausing whenever you want
LAUNCHcast Plus was only offered in the US and Canada through Yahoo. On November 2, 2008, Verizon Yahoo! announced via e-mail that certain services would be discontinued including LAUNCHcast Plus. In an e-mail delivered in January 2009, Yahoo states "the LAUNCHcast Plus premium service will be closing on February 12, 2009.". LAUNCHcast Plus was available to AT&T and Verizon subscribers at no charge previously.
2009 - current: LAUNCHcast/Yahoo! Music Radio powered by CBS
With the rise of royalty rates, Yahoo! signed a deal with CBS Radio that effectively eliminated LAUNCHcast as it had previously existed, replacing it with 150 pre-programmed stations as well as CBS's local music, news/talk, and sports stations. Yahoo! Q&A pages attempted to downplay loss of functionality these changes entailed. Personalized stations ceased to exist, though for a short time Yahoo! did save previous users' song, artist and album ratings. Since the new format organizes radio stations via genre, listeners have very limited range in what music they hear unless they regularly switch from station to station. This change also eliminated the feature that suggested songs and artists based on the user's ratings. Listeners have the option to listen to those stations in high quality (broadband) audio as well as using the 6 skips-per-hour (not applicable on local stations). One way around the inability to skip songs is to simply hit the browser's refresh button. While it does take time for the page to reload, it is faster than waiting for a song to finish.Listeners are allowed to use the out-of-five rating feature that influences the stations. While banning a song entirely is impossible, giving a song a one-star rating will have it played very rarely. The rating tool was discontinued from the Yahoo! Music Radio player as of September 21 for a time until it was restored on November 2. Ratings in the new player are not yet be saved back into Yahoo! users listings, so until Yahoo! Music and CBS Radio associate radio ratings with their profiles, Yahoo! encourages users to rate songs, artists, and albums throughout their site as well as through their recommendations based on their tastes, though there is currently little benefit to the listener in doing so. As previously, play-on-demand is not provided, as with rewind, playback, and fast-forward.
Many ads can be skipped. However, some cannot and many disable all buttons, forcing the listener to hear the ad before any music is played. Ads which can be skipped have no label or video. However, skipping ads accounts toward the hourly skip limit. Ads disabling all buttons are, as of March 2009, advertising hair products. Such ads often play upon the player's launch, and some of them have a video, which can cause problems do to increased memory usage. An occasional Nesquik ad disables the pause and skip buttons, but the channel can be changed. Refreshing the web page will generally work to skip adds.
As with the old service, unused skips do not roll-over.
For the first time, LAUNCHcast powered by CBS Radio will also be available to Firefox and Safari users. It is also available as an app on the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
.
The fan radio feature has returned to LAUNCHcast 5 months after CBS' takeover. Listeners can access the fan stations in the artist page by clicking on the "Artist Radio" link that corresponds with the artist/group. They also have the option to type in their favorite artist in the player itself.
Unlike its previous service, Yahoo! Radio by CBS does not have the option for users to turn off explicit lyrics. Although a hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
or a hip-hop station may have edited content, some explicit songs maybe mixed in there. The user must either tolerate such raw language, skip the song, or change the station.
Since the merger, the LAUNCHcast branding has slowly diminished, although LAUNCHcast was still verbally mentioned during some of their commercial breaks until March 2010.
On February 4, 2010, Yahoo! Music Radio banned users outside the U.S. from streaming online radio. An error message points to Last FM. "We're sorry, this station is unavailable from your current location. Instead, enjoy listening to...."
As of July 2011, many Yahoo users are reporting that the LAUNCHcast plugin for Yahoo! Messenger no longer works. User attempts to contact customer service have been unsuccessful.
Geographic availability
The free version of LAUNCHcast was available in most areas of the world. However, content was varied by country due to music licensing restrictions.The LAUNCHcast Plus premium service was widely available in the United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom it was restricted to BT Yahoo! Internet customers.
In Canada, LAUNCHcast and LAUNCHcast Plus was dismantled altogether as of April 15, 2009. In Australia, their LAUNCHcast service was rebranded "Yahoo! Music Radio" until they dismantled it on July 7, 2009. Many other countries followed suit prior to the relaunch of Yahoo! Music worldwide sites.
Technological requirements
The LAUNCHcast music player (from development date to February 2009) required MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
9.0 or higher to function, although it could not be streamed from the Windows Media Player itself. Before the merger with CBS Radio, LAUNCHcast only worked with Microsoft's Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
6.0 and up web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
with Flash 6.0 or higher, and in Yahoo!'s Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger is an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!...
and Music Engine programs on the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
98, ME, 2000 Professional, XP (Home and Professional). LAUNCHcast did not load properly using a Firefox web browser. According to Yahoo!, the LAUNCHcast music player was not compatible with the Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, however as of February 16, 2009; this may not be the case. Yahoo! stated that following CBS's acquisition, loading the player in Firefox may become possible.
Since the relaunch of LAUNCHcast by CBS, users are only required to download the latest Flash Player plug-in (currently Version 10). See external links (below) for Yahoo's help page on system requirements.
Legal troubles
On April 27, 2007, Yahoo! defeated Sony BMG in a copyright infringementCopyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
lawsuit involving LAUNCHcast's personalization features. At issue was whether or not LAUNCHcast's "personal radio station" constitutes an "interactive" service, which requires a negotiated license agreement with a record company, or a "non-interactive" service, which requires a cheaper "compulsory license" from SoundExchange
SoundExchange
SoundExchange is a non-profit performance rights organization that collects royalties on the behalf of sound recording copyright owners and featured artists for non-interactive digital transmissions, including satellite and Internet radio.-History:Prior to 1995, SRCOs in the United States did not...
. In an "interactive" service, users can play songs on demand, but with LAUNCHcast they can only influence whether or not a particular song appears in their station.
After a six-year litigation, a jury decided that LAUNCHcast was not required to negotiate licenses as an "interactive" service, and that the service's compulsory licenses as a "non-interactive" service were sufficient. The plaintiffs appealed the decision but on August 21, 2009 the United States Court of Appeals
United States court of appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
for the Second Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, finding that users did not have sufficient control over the playlists generated by LAUNCHcast to render it an "interactive service".
See also
- Yahoo! MusicYahoo! MusicYahoo! Music, owned by Yahoo!, is the provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming...
- AOL RadioAOL RadioAOL Radio powered by Slacker, , is an online radio service available only in the United States.- Roots :...
- SHOUTcastSHOUTcastSHOUTcast is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft , allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or HE-AAC format, to be broadcast to and from media player software, enabling the creation of Internet radio "stations"...
- Live365Live365Live365 is an Internet radio network where members can create their own online radio station or listen to other Live365 broadcasters' online stations. As of October 2006, there were about 6,500 active stations, some of which play niche genres seldom heard on AM/FM radio...
- Last.fmLast.fmLast.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
- Social.fm
- MusicoveryMusicoveryMusicovery is an interactive and customised webradio service. Listeners rate songs, resulting in a personalized programme. Reviewers have commented that unlike services that are governed by the user's choice of artist or genre, this method results in more discovery of artists to which the user...
- PandoraPandora (music service)Pandora Radio is an automated music recommendation service and custodian of the Music Genome Project available only in the United States. The service plays musical selections similar to song suggestions entered by a user...
- play.itPlay.itPlay.it is an Internet radio service owned by CBS Radio. Users can create their own customized radio stations. It also streams over 140 CBS Radio stations, as well as AOL Radio and Yahoo! Music Radio....
- SlackerSlacker (music service)Slacker Radio is an interactive Internet radio service available in the US and Canada. Listeners can access the service on the web, through mobile apps on multiple smartphones as well as on Slacker Personal Radio Players and other devices. It allows users to create and share customized music stations...