You can listen to 3000 songs per month for free without any special restrictions. After 3000 songs in a month, if you still want to listen to the free service, you'll experience the following restrictions:
You can bypass all of these restrictions with Yahoo! LAUNCHcast Plus.
Yahoo! LAUNCHcast provides a free music listening experience supported by advertising. It's currently the only free service that incorporates customized stations along with unlimited artist, album, and song ratings.
Unlike AM & FM radio, we pay royalties for every song and bandwidth fees for every minute of music that is played through our service. In order to have a free service for everyone, we have some restrictions on heavy use. These restrictions may be temporary and are subject to change as the dynamics of our business change.
If your usage exceeds a certain number of song plays (currently 3000, but subject to change) within a given month, you will be given the following choices:
If you don't upgrade to Yahoo! LAUNCHcast Plus, you will not be able to access our pre-programmed stations for the remainder of the calendar month. However, note that you will still have access to your customized station.
At the beginning of the next month, your free Yahoo! LAUNCHcast will be restored with an additional 3000 songs at medium bandwidth with skipping until you exceed the heavy usage threshold again.
Note: All songs played count toward the limit, including those that you skip.
We believe these options provide a reasonable balance by giving heavy users the ability to continue listening for free, without impacting our ability to offer a free service for all listeners.