Yahoo Music Does The Right Thing: Issues Refunds to Customers
Last Thursday, we reported that Yahoo Music was going to shut down its store and DRM licensing servers on September 30, which was basically going to leave anybody who ever bought music from the Yahoo Music Store without a license to play their music. Now, however, Yahoo has announced that it will issue a refund to its customers for the full value of their purchases. According to a report on CNet, Yahoo is also looking at making copies of the music its customers bought available to them as MP3s without any DRM.
Users who were using Yahoo's subscription service will be transferred over to Real's Rhapsody subscription service. Rhapsody also offers DRM free MP3s for sale.
Just Burn a CD
As we reported last week, Yahoo was already advising its customers to circumvent its own DRM system by just burning copies of their songs onto audio CDs and then ripping them back onto their computers as DRM-free MP3s. Apparently, though, not all customers were satisfied with this solution, though given the new solution, enterprising customers could also, of course, now burn their songs to CDs and still ask for their money back from Yahoo.
Costly Precedent
Yahoo is setting a (costly) precedent here for other music services than run into similar problems. When MSN Music shut down, it was originally going to take its licensing servers offline within a year, but because of customer complaints, it is keeping them online until the end of 2011. MSN Music is not planning on returning any money to its customers, though.
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Question:
Is there any loss in quality using the burn method if one maintains bitrates?
My hat is off to Yahoo for listening to their customers and issuing refunds. Simply put, they made a mistake going with DRM and I'm glad to see they're willing to make up for it.
I wonder how many people will actually rebuy their music, especially at a place like Amazonmp3.com. I believe Amazon has the best approach right now, and will really clean house if they can clean up their user experience a bit.
This is exactly why I held off on DRM for now. I knew there would be a consumer revolt over this. I still won't buy music from any company that support DRM.
@Michael
Yes there is loss in quality.
The linked article (which should probably have been submitted instead) also mentions this nice bit: > If a customer would prefer music over a refund, Yahoo is looking for a way to give the customer copies of the purchased songs in the DRM-free MP3 format, according to a Yahoo representative. Kudos to them, that's pretty nice.
Concur with all, nice move on Y!'s part. Although I probably won't claim refund for my 5 songs. Getting them in MP3 format would be nice.
@ Michael: yep, I love Amazon's MP3 service.
Yes, selection is small (but growing) and UI is a little messy, but this is the MP3 service we've been waiting for.
Its super fast and cheap (yes I believe artists deserve to make a few pennies). Forget illegal downloads, this is super convenient.
Also, all the files I've seen so far are at least 192 Kbps.
To qualify as the right thing, Yahoo must have done this as part of the shutdown, not in response to customer complaints. This is just their way of spinning things.
At least Yahoo is showing that they will not do as Microsoft which kicked all customers asses and left them without nothing.
I have no words to say, it's rock indeed
http://www.bangbull.com/details/23800-BE4/Amazing_natural_girl
"Maintaining Bit rates" doesn't really mean anything in the context of re-encoding. That is, if you have a 192 kbps file, and burn it to a CD, then re-rip it to 192 kbps, you ARE going to get some degree of quality loss. The bitrates used are irrelevant.
Think of it like copying a cassette tape - every copy losses a bit more fidelity. The same is true for lossily compressed audio formats. If you lossily compress audio, then decompress it, then lossily recompress it again, you have two lossy compressions, and each one will cause some measure of quality loss.
To avoid as much quality loss as possible, rip to the highest bitrate (320 kbps). To have no addition quality loss, use a lossless encoding format like FLAC.
"Yahoo is also looking at making copies of the music its customers bought available to them as MP3s without any DRM."
They must do this. (Before M$ buys them) Otherwise they can loose some pips on stock market.
Yahoo always EVENTUALLY does the right thing!
So I'll just wait!