Yahoo clearly did its homework before launching the Yahoo Music Unlimited service (and the free jukebox it lives in, Yahoo Music Engine), borrowing the best things about several different products. This includes the open plug-in system that made Winamp so popular for so long by letting scores of developers extend that program's functionality with various encoders, visualizations, support for the iPod, and much, much more. Skins, on the other hand, merely change the appearance of the program and are easier to make than plug-ins, because they only involve graphics. Winamp made these features possible, but Yahoo's is the first music subscription service to offer plug-ins and skins.

Enough background. You're probably wondering which plug-ins to start using with Yahoo Music Engine or Yahoo Music Unlimited (the subscription version). Based on our early testing, here are the best of the bunch, along with links so you can download each one to try for yourself. The descriptions are short because all these are free, and the plug-ins are so easy to try.

Note: You'll need to have Yahoo Music Engine installed first, and you should close the program before installing any of these these.

Gary Frattarola's MiniMode

Once you're listening to an album or playlist, you don't need that big honking full-screen interface anymore. This plug-in gives you six mini-interfaces of varying coolness (our favorite is Psyclopse). Click each one once for a preview, or double-click one to start using it. To return to the normal mode, click the Up arrow, wherever it may be in the minimode view you've selected. (As for the weirdly spelled alternate title... If you don't know what it means, you don't need to.)

Dave Brown's Mail It

If you and your friends all use Yahoo Messenger, this program's useless, since you can both use it to IM playlists around. But if they don't use Yahoo IM but do subscribe to Yahoo Music Unlimited, you can use the latter program to send them playlists as e-mail attachments, automatically using your default e-mail client (so you can edit your messages). When the recipient double-clicks the attachment, the Yahoo Music Engine opens, and he or she hears the playlist. It's simple yet effective.

Ian Rogers' MusicBlogs Publisher

With this plug-in running, you can export your playlists of Yahoo Music Unlimited songs in an RSS feed that other YMU users can subscribe and listen to (perhaps using PodcastPlus, below).

Steve Heyman's LineIn Plug-in

With this plug-in selected, Yahoo Music Engine can record from a microphone or audio device (iPod, CD player, and others) and then encode the file as a WAV or MP3 at any standard bit rate. Name the song, check the levels, and you're off to the races. Checking the Add to My Music box puts your recordings right into your library quite conveniently.