Yahoo! LAUNCHcast Bought Out by CBS Radio

This morning, I am truly grieving. Yahoo! LAUNCHcast has been bought out by CBS Radio in an attempt to monetize the service. The former and much beloved My Station option is gone.

When you log into LAUNCHcast, you are met with the message, "LAUNCHcast is now powered by CBS Radio. At this time we are unable to offer customized radio stations. You now have easy access to all of your other personalized music content from the site navigation above."

You are now left with two options. You can either listen to your top rated songs, or you can hear song recommendations. The beauty of your station on LAUNCHcast was being able to stream your favorite songs AND listen to recommendations, all in one sitting. Now, you have to choose between the two.

Many, if not most of your favorite songs are no longer available. Some songs have been reduced to 30 second clips. Adding insult to injury, when you do listen to one of the above options, a small Rhapsody player pops up, saying you only have 25 free plays! Of course you can upgrade this awful service, for a fee - $12.99 a month or a meager $129.99 a year.

Yahoo!'s reputation went down the toilet when they started charging an outrageous $34.95 for yearly domain name renewals. Now this?

(I've been writing this article for about four minutes as of this point. I'm down to 23 more songs and have only heard one full song.)

I was a huge fan of LAUNCHcast. It was my saving grace when I lived in Japan and had literally one crappy radio station to listen to, brought to us by the military. Several genres of music were squeezed into that one station. While I was at work, I maintained my sanity by tuning into LAUNCHcast.

(Oh look - my last song just repeated, and I now have 21 plays left. Thieves!)

I also loved how it merged my top-rated songs with recommended songs I had never heard before. Sure we all have iTunes playlists now, but LAUNCHcast was free, and you never knew what you were going to hear next. After about five years of rating songs, my recommendations were almost always spot on. Now, all of that memory is gone, as are most of the sons.

The only good change, is the sound quality. With the free LAUNCHcast, you had to listen to your songs in a low quality setting. I didn't see any problem with it. I had upgraded a couple times, but in the end, music is music when you're at work or cleaning around the house.

I've tried to follow my own mantra, "Don't write mad," but I'm afraid I haven't been too successful. I feel like this is the end of an era. I want to pull a Chris Brown on CBS Radio; I jest, but I am livid.

CBS Radio:

Please bring back the original LAUNCHcast, along with our old ratings and all of the songs that went with it. Bring My Station back. If you are that greedy, charge us for upgrades that bring about better sound and fewer advertisements. After this disappointing change, it's obvious that the execs of CBS Radio aren't true music lovers.

One last thought, was it a smart move to charge for a formerly free service in this economy?

(19 songs and plenty of tears left.)