Yahoo! has confirmed it will maintain its low music subscription charges as its Yahoo! Music service moves out of its testing phase.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Yahoo! marketing chief Cammie Dunaway said the trial pricing plans would stand.

Those figures compare with the $15 a month services like Napster charge for the same package, which includes full support for portable MP3 players.

Yahoo! this week unveiled an aggressive advertising programme to promote its music service. The scheme includes TV advertising during the MTV Awards show on 28 August, along with ads integrated into upcoming video games, the company said.

Yahoo! Music is currently only open to US consumers. The service is supplied by online music distributed MusicNet, and is compatible only with Windows Media-based devices. iPod owners need not apply.

But therein lies Apple's strength, leaving Yahoo! to fight it out with rival WMA suppliers like Napster, Virgin Digital and Wal-Mart, and left-field players like RealNetworks and Sony. With hardware sales driving music download demand, and Apple owning the hardware market, it's also unsurprisingly got the lion's share of the download business. And its iTunes jukebox software has helped it win customers who just want to buy songs to play on their PCs.

Crucially, until the iPod supports WMA, there's little reason for an iPod owner to buy songs from anyone other than Apple, insulating the company from the fight between the other vendors, all tussling for the attention of Creative, Samsung, iRiver etc owners. So does Apple's focus on sales rather than subscriptions. ®

Related stories

• Real revives radio-style Euro music service (13 December 2005)
• Rhapsody 'preview' for Mac, Linux users (6 December 2005)
• Apple CEO blasts 'greedy' music labels (20 September 2005)
• Yahoo! goes! TV-tastic! (19 September 2005)
• Analysis Apple touts iTunes' UK 80% market share (7 September 2005)
• Napster UK touts subscriber numbers (5 September 2005)
• Telewest duets with Virgin Digital (5 September 2005)
• Virgin, HMV to launch UK music downloads (31 August 2005)
• Nokia to put iTunes on N91? (18 August 2005)
• Sony counters iPod Shuffle with the Bean (18 August 2005)
• RIAA admits CD-R more a threat than P2P (15 August 2005)
• iTunes to yield 5% of Apple's revenues in 2006 (12 August 2005)
• Creative plunges into the red (11 August 2005)
• iPod fails to impress South Koreans (11 August 2005)
• iTunes-friendly artists rebel against laggard labels (10 August 2005)
• Microsoft, Apple 'spar over iPod patent' (10 August 2005)
• Apple pledges to refund punters hit by Canada iPod tax (9 August 2005)