Yahoo! Music Radio - 2009 - 2012: LAUNCHcast/Yahoo! Music Radio Powered By CBS

2012: LAUNCHcast/Yahoo! Music Radio Powered By CBS

With the rise of royalty rates, Yahoo! signed a deal with CBS Radio that effectively eliminated LAUNCHcast as it had previously existed, replacing it with 150 pre-programmed stations as well as CBS's local music, news/talk, and sports stations. Yahoo! Q&A pages attempted to downplay loss of functionality these changes entailed. Personalized stations ceased to exist, though for a short time Yahoo! did save previous users' song, artist and album ratings. Since the new format organizes radio stations via genre, listeners have very limited range in what music they hear unless they regularly switch from station to station. This change also eliminated the feature that suggested songs and artists based on the user's ratings. Listeners have the option to listen to those stations in high quality (broadband) audio as well as using the 6 skips-per-hour (not applicable on local stations). One way around the inability to skip songs is to simply hit the browser's refresh button. While it did take time for the page to reload, it was faster than waiting for a song to finish.

Listeners were allowed to use the out-of-five rating feature that influences the stations. While banning a song entirely is impossible, giving a song a one-star rating would have it played very rarely. The rating tool was discontinued from the Yahoo! Music Radio player as of September 21 for a time until it was restored on November 2. Ratings in the new player were not yet be saved back into Yahoo! users listings, and as of 2012, Yahoo! Music and CBS Radio has not associated radio ratings with their profiles. Yahoo! encourages users to rate songs, artists, and albums throughout their site as well as through their recommendations based on their tastes, though there is currently little benefit to the listener in doing so. In its first incarnation, play-on-demand is not provided, as with rewind, playback, and fast-forward.

Many ads could be skipped. However, some cannot and many disable all buttons, forcing the listener to hear the ad before any music is played. Ads which can be skipped have no label or video. However, skipping ads accounts toward the hourly skip limit. Ads disabling all buttons are, as of March 2009, advertising hair products. Such ads often play upon the player's launch, and some of them have a video, which can cause problems do to increased memory usage. An occasional Nesquik ad disables the pause and skip buttons, but the channel can be changed. Refreshing the web page will generally work to skip adds.

As with the old service, unused skips do not roll-over.

For the first time, LAUNCHcast powered by CBS Radio will also be available to Firefox and Safari users. It is also available as an app on the iPhone.

The fan radio feature has returned to LAUNCHcast 5 months after CBS' takeover. Listeners can access the fan stations in the artist page by clicking on the "Artist Radio" link that corresponds with the artist/group. They also have the option to type in their favorite artist in the player itself.

Unlike its old service, Yahoo! Radio by CBS does not have the option for users to turn off explicit lyrics. Although a hard rock or a hip-hop station may have edited content, some explicit songs maybe mixed in there. The user must either tolerate such raw language, skip the song, or change the station.

Since the merger, the LAUNCHcast branding has slowly diminished, although LAUNCHcast was still verbally mentioned during some of their commercial breaks until March 2010.

On February 4, 2010, Yahoo! Music Radio banned users outside the U.S. from streaming online radio. An error message points to Last FM. "We're sorry, this station is unavailable from your current location. Instead, enjoy listening to...."

As of July 2011, many Yahoo users are reporting that the LAUNCHcast plugin for Yahoo! Messenger no longer works. User attempts to contact customer service have been unsuccessful.