Wild.er

The new Yahoo! Music has an great new function that allows you to listen from the web site to any of the 2 million+ tracks in their collection as long as the music is in a playlist. To enjoy this unlimited music on the web install the Firefox plugin on your PC. Here’s what Yahoo! says about the beta version of the plugin:

If you have a subscription to Yahoo! Music Unlimited and want to listen to your tracks in Firefox using the Yahoo! Media Player, you need to install this plug-in. It currently works with Yahoo! Music web playlists, but full-length playback may not be available on other pages of Yahoo! Music at present.

Let’s take a look at some screen shots:

Maximum Size:

Maximum Size with a Playlist:

Smaller Size:

Minimized (it’s docked to the bottom left corner of the browser):

On the site:

Since this only works with playlists doesn’t it follow that you could search or browse playlists on the Yahoo! Music web site. If it is possible I haven’t been able to figure that out. The work around for now is to search in the standalone Yahoo! Music Jukebox for the playlist then you can get the link that can be copied into Firefox.

I’ve done that here: Ross Todd’s Essentials, Kill Bill Soundtrack reconstruction, Sean G’s Jams.

Other issues:

• If you don’t have any playlists available then the only songs that are available are those with a play button by them.
• Most of the music on the site can’t be played because it does not have that new purple play button.
• The music stops when you go to a new page by clicking on the artist name in the music player.
• No way to play the complete list of recommended songs.
• No way to create a playlist out of the songs available on the page.
• The site does not work properly when Adblock Plus is active (perhaps this is on purpose so users of this plugin have to view advertisements?).
• Update: Yahoo! Media Player Plug-in (Beta) is not available for MacOSX.

Yahoo! has a way to go to make this web based player more useful, but it is a good start.

[Yahoo! Media Player Plug-in (Beta)]