YAHOO WON’T PLAY WITH MYPLAY

After being wrapped up in negotiation since early June, Yahoo will pass on its attempt to acquire music storage site Myplay.com, according to Webnoize.com. The deal was speculated to be worth around $200 million.

Both Yahoo and Myplay declined to comment on the close of the negotiations, only saying that they ended mutually.

According to sources at Myplay, the company soured on the deal because of the offering price and differences in vision between the two companies. Webnoize reported that Yahoo's inability to help its acquisitions continue to innovate in their fields may have raised questions for Myplay.

Feeling the need to get into the online music game, Yahoo was very interested in what Myplay had to offer, particularly its use as a subscription service. Now, Yahoo's future in that space is unclear. While the portal launched a media player on June 29 and offers some aggregated music content—including tracks from EMusic.com and IUMA.com—it has no wide-reaching storage service, promotional track distribution, shared playlist technology or any of those other cool gizmos the kids find so "dope."

In the wake of the deal, Myplay will maintain its relationship with AOL, which since June has offered users the option of starting a Myplay "locker" when they download the Winamp audio player. Myplay paid AOL $10 million in March to integrate its service, presumably in hopes to expand its user-base past its current level of one million.

Of course, Myplay's ties with AOL could pan out quite well for the music site, considering the pending Time Warner deal, Warner Music's proposed merger with EMI Recorded Music and AOL's "preferred content provider" status with BMG Entertainment.

And the folks at Myplay probably aren't too saddened by the world of hurt raining down on MP3.com either.