SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Yahoo Inc. is buying online jukebox provider Musicmatch Inc. for $160 million in a deal designed to broaden the Internet giant's appeal with the growing audience of consumers who buy songs off the Web.
The all-cash acquisition, announced Tuesday, gives Sunnyvale-based Yahoo a major drawing card as it competes against the likes of Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Napster in the rapidly growing field of digital music management.
"This really rounds out everything we do in music," Dave Goldberg, general manager of Yahoo's music division, said during an interview Tuesday. "We want to offer users a way to interact with digital music in any way that they want."
Investors applauded the deal. Yahoo's shares surged more than 4 percent, or $1.33, to $33.20 in Tuesday's trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Musicmatch's music management software also is a crucial component in the deal, Leigh said, because so many consumers are transferring songs from their existing CD collections to personal computers and other digital devices. Yahoo's musical hub, an online radio service that's offered for free, already is the most popular on the Web, attracting 14.4 million unique visitors during August, according to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm. America Online's music service ranked second with 13.2 million visitors last month, followed by Musicmatch with 5.8 million visitors, comScore said.
Founded in 1997, Musicmatch has about 170 employees. Yahoo hasn't determined the fate of all the workers, Goldberg said Tuesday, but the company expects to retain an office in San Diego.
The sale vindicates Musicmatch CEO and founder Dennis Mudd, who overcame early skepticism to build a successful business. While attending the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1986, Mudd wrote his master's thesis on digital audio distribution. Mudd's professor gave the paper a "B," convinced the business model was unrealistic.
Already the Web's most popular destination, Yahoo is counting on Musicmatch's appeal to attract new visitors and persuade existing users to remain on the site longer. If Yahoo achieves that goal, its site may become an even more powerful advertising magnet.
Digital music is becoming a big business in its own right. Sales from online music subscriptions and song downloading is expected to soar during the next five years, rising from an estimated $271 million this year to $1.7 billion in 2009, according to Jupiter Research.
The Musicmatch deal also gives Yahoo another potentially powerful weapon in its intensifying battle with other popular Web sites, such as Google, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and AOL, that have become major Internet entry points.
"Yahoo is really upping the ante here," said Jimmy Schaeffler, chairman of The Carmel Group, an online entertainment research firm. "It opens up a whole set of other opportunities for other music services to be sold."
Roxio Inc., which has reformed Napster's once-renegade music downloading service, shapes up as an attractive takeover target, Leigh said. Roxio's shares rose 13 cents, nearly 4 percent, to $3.67 in Tuesday's trading on the Nasdaq.
