Music store closes. You lose.
by Volker Weber
The Yahoo! Music Store, along with the ability to purchase and download single songs and albums, will no longer be available as of September 30, 2008. Songs and albums that were purchased through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store... are protected by a digital rights management system that requires a valid license key before they can be played on your computer. After the Store closes, Yahoo! will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for music purchased from Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Yahoo! will no longer be able to authorize song playback on additional computers.
Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.
[Thanks, Hanno]
Comments
they should do as Microsoft did keep the license servers online after shop closure
Ok Microsoft needed a kick but at least they changed their opinon
Yahoo needs a kick as well. That does not solve the problem. Eventually the servers will be switched off. And your crippled music dies. Microsoft, Yahoo, or Apple.
Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.
-Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.
I agree but since its hard to wrestle with the rights owners it will take some time before its all gone
Yahoo is dying.
I have a website for a historical society I help with through Yahoo and it just stopped working this week.
Customer service really lacks there, is very very slow if at all response.
Abandon the sinking Yahoo ship!!!
Hate to see it go...had Yahoo email for years and really prefer the Yahoo Messenger to all others (except Sametime of course ;)
A shame...
It's OK - the UK government is looking at licensing unlimited downloads of un-DRM'd music for GBP 30 per year. After that happens, there won't be any future for iTunes, CDs or any other form of DRM'd music! ;-)
Strangely, the proposal comes from the music industry, who would IMHO be commiting suicide if anything like that were implemented...
Yes, much fuss and a bit of action today in the UK about the whole issue of illegal file sharing. I've expressed my own opinions about that here before now....
But I am a little alarmed at the notion, expressed and implied by some of the commentary I have read and heard, that all music that ever was recorded is available (or is likely to become available) in an electronic format - I know my own tastes are often a bit arcane and abstruse, but I own an awful lot of music on LPs that has never been re-released in any other form. Better keep that needle sharp...
@Nick - thanks for the BBC link - so the BPI hasn't proposed commiting suicide! I did find the reports earlier today VERY strange!
The Yahoo Music store customers are not totally out of luck. If they burn their music to CDs before the store shuts down, they will be able to create DRM free versions of the files they purchased from the store. Yahoo let their customers know this fact in the same email that is quoted at the beginning of this post.
Yes this is a pain, and yes the novice user won't know how to do this. But having looked at the Yahoo Music Store myself, I am not sure any novice users would be regular customers of that service.
By doing so, you remove the DRM. I advise everybody to do just that RIGHT AWAY.
Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.
DRM is bad for the customer.
If i have bought music electronicly, why do i have to buy cds (for burning) again just for playing them on my other pcs or mp3 players. that sucks.
Yet another reason for for sharing music with emule etc...
I would fell betrayed by the mi. And betrayed people will maybe look for other ways once that happend to them.
DRM is very bad for the the society , not just for the customer !
this CD burning odyssey would end, if there was a virtual disc burner solution - a piece of software that emulates a CD / DVD burner and creates ISO files. I haven't been lucky searching for this until now.
DRM is bad for the customer.
DRM is bad for everyone.
DRM kills music.
DRM kills opportunities.
DRM kills people.
Ok, that last one may be pretty far fetched. But then again...
DRM is bad alright.
@Arnd, wouldn't this be a solution for you? I must say, I haven't tried it myself, but it seems to do just what you want.
@Ragnar: this looks promising - the first virtual CD-Writer. However I would not buy Windows SW anymore. Linux / Mac is what I use at home. But thanks for the link.
