Yahoo! Music announced a new version of its music software application, the Yahoo! Music Engine. The upgraded Yahoo! Music Engine offers enhanced functionality for simple playlist creation and sharing, improved portability synching, as well as the ability to connect music throughout the home with a new Network Music feature.

With the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Engine, music fans and members of the Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription service will benefit from the significant performance upgrades as they build and expand their personalized music libraries. Consumers now have the capability to share custom playlists with other users, easy drag and drop of music onto their portable devices and the ability to listen to music via Yahoo! Music Unlimited in their living rooms.

“The ability for users to create, manage and search for playlists is a necessity for today’s music fans as they gain access to larger music libraries,” stated Dave Goldberg, Head of Yahoo! Music. “Our new innovations focused on providing users the essential tools for better personalization and community, as well as the ability to have their playlists available to them wherever they are.”

Highlights of the upgraded Yahoo! Music Engine include:

Shared Playlists:

  • — Publish your Playlists: Playlists can be shared with other music fans by e-mail or via Yahoo! Messenger. Users can choose to make playlists public so the entire Yahoo! Music community can enjoy them.
  • — Browse Playlists from Music Fans: New community tools help users find music, as well as fans with similar tastes. Users can also click-through user profile pages and view public community playlists to expand their music discovery.
  • — Playlist Search: Advanced Yahoo! Search technology enables searches for user-created playlists by artist, song, or keyword.

Your Music — Anytime, Anywhere:

  • — Playlist Accessibility: Playlists will be automatically saved for user access anywhere, anytime, from any PC.
  • — Improved Portability Synching: Users can drag and drop albums and songs directly from the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service onto their portable device, as well as create custom playlists specific for their portable device.
  • — Listen to Digital Music in Your Living Room: The Yahoo! Music Engine will automatically detect any supported devices on your network and allow users to easily play music from their collections throughout their home on any supported network music device.
  • — Burn Music to a CD faster and more efficiently: Creating a custom mix CD of favorite songs has never been easier.

Information about the new features is available at music.yahoo.com/musicengine/install/whatsnew/

The free Yahoo! Music Engine is home to the Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription service which allows users the opportunity to play music from a catalog of more than one million songs, transfer tracks to portable devices, as well as enjoy the unique ability to share and discover music with other subscribers through Yahoo! Messenger. Yahoo! Music Unlimited is available for an annual fee of $59.88 (equates to $4.99 per month) or a monthly subscription price of $6.99. Yahoo! Music Unlimited with the to-go feature is available for an annual fee of $119.88 (equates to $9.99 per month) or a monthly subscription price of $11.99.