LAUNCHcast is an Internet radio service offered by Yahoo! Music that plays music based on user ratings and preferences. Users with Yahoo! accounts can gain access to hundreds of thousands of songs sorted by artist, album, song and genre. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2001.

Personal radio stations

LAUNCHcast allows users to create personal radio stations or playlists of songs tailored to their musical tastes.

To create a personal station, users must rate music on a 4-star or 100-point (depending on one's preference) scale. The service uses those ratings to create a personal station of songs based on a user's favorite genres, artists, albums, and songs. The generated playlist contains a combination of rated and recommended songs. The ratio of rated/recommended songs can be specified by each user, but by default it is 50/50.

A recommendation engine suggests songs that may match a user's particular musical taste according to the following similarity criteria:

• Songs from the same artist
• Songs from the same album
• Songs from the same genre
• Songs recommended by users with similar musical tastes
• Songs recommended by Yahoo!

Users are not required to participate in the ratings system to listen to music. Pre-programmed stations based on theme, genre, or artist are available throughout the Yahoo! Music website.

Music videos can also be rated, allowing users to create personal music video channels as well. For legal reasons, particular songs cannot be played whenever one wishes. However, videos can be. The service can generate a personal video channel based on a single selection.

Free accounts

Users may share their personal stations publicly and listen to other users' stations.

Music is available for streaming at "Standard" quality. Previously, listeners had a choice between "Low" and "Medium" quality.

Between tracks, free accounts will hear commercial advertising for the Yahoo! service and its partners and affiliates. The advertisements are generally 30 seconds.

In 2007 Yahoo! added permanent banner ads to the LAUNCHcast player. Because Launchcast is only compatible with Internet Explorer, which charges for its banner ad blocker, users must either tolerate the banner ads or pay to block them.

Limited skipping is available, at up to 5 skips per hour. Previously, banning a song skipped the song automatically, but this has since been removed.

As of May 2008, free accounts are limited to playing up to 1000 songs/mo (up to 120,000/yr) without any special restrictions. This number is subject to change. A song may be skipped to bypass an undesired track, but skipped songs count against the monthly allowance. If a free account user exceeds the monthly limit, the user will no longer be able to listen to LAUNCHcast radio for the remainder of the month. If the user does not exceed the limit, the leftover songs are not carried over.