Yahoo just release an update of its mp3 player that no matter how Yahoo wants to underplay it, still web analysts might see it as the start of something grand to come.
Previously, the Yahoo MP3 player lets users playback 30-second samples and tracks of music from Yahoo’s Music web site. But with the release of the new MP3 player, users can now embed a player that would support music from third party web pages. This embedded player runs on a javascript from Yahoo’s JavaScript Developer center.
- The interface between your document and our library is unobtrusive Javascript and semantic HTML: even though our library is Javascript internally, the API is HTML.
- The API is fairly rich. You can set the image we use for album art. You can control the playlist sequence. You can tell us the song title. You can operate in strict mode or quirks mode. To learn more, see How To Link on the wiki.
- We’re creating a new generation of playlist technology by turning the page into a playlist. Our player knits all the songs in the page together so that they play one after the other. The result is continuous play within the hosting web page.
- This is different from a badge in that we don’t provide the content. It doesn’t make sense for these to always be tied together.
- It’s different from a normal library in that users don’t need to install their own copy. This makes it easier for users to adopt, and it allows us to do ongoing maintenance at web speed.
- If you fool around with the player you’ll find that you can click through to a Yahoo! search on the song title. This is a simple and unintrusive way to for us to monetize the traffic, and it keeps our business goals aligned with user needs because the search has to be adding value if we want people to use it.
Well, those were pretty interesting features indeed for a small box that you would embed on your websites and lets you listen to mp3. I would have to agree with Arrington, that Yahoo may indeed be up to something big and the Yahoo MP3 player might just be a springboard.
But who knows what might follow next and where this mp3 player is heading? And with the barage of announcements on enhancements to Yahoo’s products, it looks like Jerry Yang and his crew have waited for the new year to usher in, and open it up with a Yahoo bang!
