I received a notice in my email this morning that Yahoo! Music is changing. Really? I wasn’t aware that there WAS a Yahoo! Music. Apparently so. Why they are sending me a notice to my GMail account I don’t know. I’ve never signed up for their service, and it isn’t a phishing attack (I checked).
This is what Yahoo! had to say:
We currently are in the process of evolving Yahoo! Music to further meet the needs of our users and give music fans more of what they want.
Awesome! They’re going to start giving away DRM-free music? They’re going to feature only good music? They’re going to stop foisting Brittany Spears on us? I read the next paragraph.
Therefore, on the 15th of December, Yahoo! Music UK and Ireland will be reducing the number of radio stations available to the most popular radio stations on the service. In late January both our radio and video services plus our artists pages will be discontinued entirely.
Huh? This is giving the music fans more of what they want? OK, I can take this one of two ways. Either music fans were clamoring for Yahoo! Music to be discontinued, or people don’t want to download music. I’m skeptical of both propositions. They closed the email with this:
Our revamped news and blog pages will continue to function until we launch the new-look Yahoo! Music before the summer.
Please click here for more information.
So apparently they are going to relaunch. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me that if you’re going to relaunch your service in a totally different direction, and you want to alert your users, you might want to lead with that straight off. Something like “Hey, we’re going to expand our listings and make more information and music available to you! Coming Summer 2009!” You also might think about developing the new service in parallel with the existing one to keep the more than 25 users of Yahoo! Music from switching to Limewire in the intervening months.
Overall communications score: C- (Had they not included the link, they would’ve gotten an F).
