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LAUNCHcast
Developer:	Yahoo!
OS:	Microsoft Windows
Genre:	Broadcasting - Internet Radio service
Website:	LAUNCHcast

LAUNCHcast is an Internet radio service offered by Yahoo! Music that plays music based on user ratings and preferences. Users with Yahoo! accounts can gain access to hundreds of thousands of songs sorted by artist, album, song and genre. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2001.

Contents 1 Personal radio stations 1.1 Free accounts 1.2 LAUNCHcast Plus 2 Geographic availability 3 Technological requirements 4 Legal troubles 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

LAUNCHcast allows users to create personal radio stations or playlists of songs tailored to their musical tastes.

To create a personal station, users must rate music on a 5-point or 100-point (depending on one's preference) scale. The service uses those ratings to create a personal station of songs based on a user's favorite genres, artists, albums, and songs. The generated playlist contains a combination of rated and recommended songs. The ratio of rated/recommended songs can be specified by each user, but by default it is 50/50.

A recommendation engine suggests songs that may match a user's particular musical taste according to the following similarity criteria:

• Songs from the same artist
• Songs from the same album
• Songs from the same genre
• Songs recommended by users with similar musical tastes
• Songs recommended by Yahoo!

Users are not required to participate in the ratings system to listen to music. Pre-programmed stations based on theme, genre, or artist are available throughout the Yahoo! Music website.

Music videos can also be rated, allowing users to create personal music video channels as well. For legal reasons, particular songs cannot be played whenever one wishes. However, videos can be. The service can generate a personal video channel based on a single selection.

Users may share their personal stations publicly and listen to other users' stations.

Music is available for streaming at "Low" and "Medium" quality.

Between tracks, free accounts will hear commercial advertising for the Yahoo! service and its partners and affiliates. In 2007 Yahoo! added permanent banner ads to the LAUNCHcast player.

Limited skipping is available. Usually, a song may not be skipped in the first 30 seconds. If a song is rated poorly, the player may (or may not) skip it automatically. Free accounts are only allowed to skip a limited number of times.

Free accounts are limited to playing 3000 songs per calendar month (this number is subject to change) without any special restrictions. A song may be skipped to bypass an undesired track, but skipped songs count against the monthly allowance. If a free account user exceeds the monthly limit, the user will experience several restrictions for the remainder of the month:

1. Song-skipping is no longer available
2. Audio quality is lowered
3. The stream is switched from stereo to mono
4. Pre-programmed stations are no longer available
5. The song catalog is curtailed for customized stations

Users may subscribe to the LAUNCHcast Plus premium service on a monthly or annual basis. In addition to the features offered by the free account, LAUNCHcast Plus users receive the following additional benefits:

1. "High" quality sound (CD-quality)
2. No commercials or banner ads
3. Access to all LAUNCHcast pre-programmed stations
4. Unlimited skipping
5. Unlimited monthly listening
6. Access to all artists, songs, and albums
7. The ability to designate other user's stations as "influencers" of one's own personal radio station
8. The ability to create "moods" (genre-based subsets of a user's personal radio station)

The free version of LAUNCHcast is available in most areas of the world. However, content varies by country due to music licensing restrictions.^{[citation needed]}

The LAUNCHcast Plus premium service is widely available in the United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom it is restricted to BT Yahoo! Internet customers.^{[citation needed]}

The LAUNCHcast music player requires Microsoft's Windows Media Player to function. At the present time, LAUNCHcast only works with Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, Netscape 7.1 and in Yahoo!'s Messenger and Music Engine programs on the Microsoft Windows operating system. Compatibility is claimed with Macintosh OS X, but there are known issues that have not been resolved.^{[citation needed]}

On April 27, 2007, Yahoo! defeated Sony BMG in a copyright infringement lawsuit involving LAUNCHcast's personalization features^[1]. At issue was whether or not LAUNCHcast's "personal radio station" constitutes an "interactive" service, which requires a negotiated license agreement with a record company, or a "non-interactive" service, which requires a cheaper "compulsory license" from SoundExchange. In an "interactive" service, users can play songs on demand, but with LAUNCHcast they can only influence whether or not a particular song appears in their station.

After a six-year litigation, a jury decided that LAUNCHcast was not required to negotiate licenses as an "interactive" service, and that the service's compulsory licenses as a "non-interactive" service were sufficient.

• Yahoo! Music
• Pandora
• Mercora
• Last.fm
• Slacker

• LAUNCHcast
• Yahoo! Music
• LAUNCHcast plugin for bloggers
• LAUNCHcast AdMute - Automatically skips LAUNCHcast Ads!

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