Yahoo Inc. is buying online jukebox provider Musicmatch Inc. for $160 million in a deal designed to broaden the Internet giant’s appeal with the growing audience of consumers who buy songs off the Web.
The all-cash acquisition, announced Tuesday, gives Sunnyvale-based Yahoo a major drawing card as it competes against the likes of Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Napster in the rapidly growing field of digital music management.
“This really rounds out everything we do in music,” Dave Goldberg, general manager of Yahoo’s music division, said during an interview Tuesday. “We want to offer users a way to interact with digital music in any way that they want.”
San Diego-based Musicmatch will provide Yahoo with two features that it doesn’t currently offer — an online music store that sells individual songs for 99 cents apiece and a popular software program that helps manage digital music on computer desktops.
Musicmatch’s digital jukebox, available in 10 languages, includes 700,000 songs. Besides letting consumers download songs a la carte, Musicmatch sells an $8-per-month subscription services that lets customers listen to any song in the library at any time on the Internet. About 225,000 subscribers pay for Musicmatch’s unlimited access service.
