Online search giant Yahoo, Inc. has plans to launch a music subscription service on Wednesday, which will compete against other services like Apple’s iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster and numerous others. Yahoo will offer both rent-a-tune type music as well as an option to purchase a single song. The interesting aspect of Yahoo’s service will be that the online search engine will price its songs much less than the competition.

Yahoo said it will introduce its service with nearly one million songs in its online library. The company will retail its rent-a-tune service for $59.88 per year or $6.99 per month, which is significantly lower than what Yahoo’s competition offers. According to Yahoo, users will be able to listen to songs on their personal computers as well as their portable audio players without extra charges. However, none of the songs will play if Yahoo’s subscription service is cancelled.

RealNetworks provides the same service as Yahoo, but charges $9.99 per month for rent-a-tune service and $14.95 per month if the user wants to listen to the songs on the portable audio player.

The search company also lowered the price per song from the usual $0.99 per song to $.79; an approximately 25.3 percent price difference compared to other music services.

Industry analysts said Yahoo’s decision to provide such a service will have an impact on the industry as well as its competitors that are in the same field. JupiterResearch, a market research firm, speculates the online music service sales to jump between $800 and $900 million by 2009.

The research firm also said, in four years the online music subscription services will account for nearly 12 percent of the total $13.5 billion in music sales. In 2003, the sales only accounted for one percent of the $13.5 billion sales.

Yahoo will also enable users to share their playlist via its Yahoo Messenger service, which, according to the company, will help promote its service.

Analysts predicted that Apple’s iTunes service will continue to be the stronghold of the industry, but Apple will have to launch a similar rent-a-tune service in the near future if it wants to stay in competition.