Yahoo! Launches Artist Pages Linked To iTunes and YouTube

Today, Yahoo launched “artist pages“, which provide band tour dates, music videos, reviews and connect to Internet radio services like Last.fm and Pandora, as well as YouTube. Now you can have easy access to updated information about your favorite bands through Yahoo’s extensive network.

“We’re creating a truly open and indispensable music destination,” said Jeff Dossett, senior vice president of Yahoo’s North America Audience Group. The artist pages offer some new features, like customizable content on pages, but is the market already saturated with music “portals”?

Yahoo claims more than 500 million users worldwide, but doesn’t make much money off of them. Why? Maybe because as a search engine, Yahoo can’t compete with Google, but as a music platform, maybe it can. “Being a portal was Yahoo!’s major strength,” analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley said. “They lost their way when they decided they wanted to be Google.”

Furthermore, Yahoo said that artist pages will eventually allow users to upload their own music, and let users customize the content displayed on the page. In terms of functionality, artist pages seem very similar to Myspace, but it’s possible that Yahoo will give access to users more efficiently to the most popular artists, because o Yahoo! Music’s front page provides public opinion, concert dates, with “recommended” videos, songs, albums and artists.

To help make money, Yahoo will provide links to iTunes and Amazon.com, where fans can buy music. So is Yahoo creating another Myspace Music? I guess that will depend on how users use the site. If it becomes the go-to site for videos, concert tickets, and radio, then we could expect it to develop those areas further. But if fans are more interested in networking, reviewing artists and other social features, then Yahoo could end up in a whole different league of competitors.

The new venture might be too broad, because fans probably already know more specific places to get information. For example, instead of getting linked to Pandora, fans could simply go directly to Pandora. But if Yahoo garners interest from smaller artists looking for distribution, perhaps they’ll have more to offer. Is the Internet already too full of this type of music portal? Will it be useful?

Source: Physorg