The Final Days of DRM: Yahoo Music Store Closing, Will Eat Your Purchased Music
Digital Rights Management technology is dying, it's becoming understood that hobbling tunes to enforce scarcity isn't the best way to monetize the music business online. What about all the suckers who bought DRM laden music in recent years, though? When the Yahoo! Music Store closes its doors this fall, the company announced today, past customers dependent on their music "phoning home" to get license approval before playing are out of luck. They'll be able to continue playing purchased tracks on a single computer, until they make any changes to their operating system.
The rise and fall of the Yahoo! Music Store will make for an interesting story some day, but for now the DRM story is particularly important.
Yahoo! now encourages customers to burn their music files to CDs. That may not be a terribly onerous requirement, but the point is that when you purchased a license for songs, everyone really meant it when they said this might not last forever.
As Jon Healey wrote on his LA TImes digital media blog, both Microsoft and Sony have tried to shutter their music services without providing ongoing support for already purchased material. Both faced a substantial consumer backlash. Sony extended their support through the end of this year and Microsoft did so for 3 more years. Healey suspects that too few people ever bought music from Yahoo! to create that kind of backlash and doesn't seem to think it's a big deal any way. Given that Yahoo! may be the most trafficked company on the web, we find this hard to agree with.
We think this is an instructive tale about technology, rights to user data and DRM - which is sure to rear its head again if content industries are unable to find more effective monetization strategies.
Here's the email Yahoo! Music sent out to customers last night:
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.
After September 30, 2008, you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems. Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer's operating system.
For any user who purchased tracks through Yahoo! Music Unlimited, we highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store on September 30, 2008. Backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved.
For further information on the closing of the Yahoo! Music Store, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions or contact Customer Care.
Stay tuned! While the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store will no longer be available, Yahoo! Music has partnered with Rhapsody so you can still purchase your favorite tracks. Plus, Yahoo! Music will continue to offer users a complete online music experience with the largest collection of music videos, Internet radio, exclusive artist features, music news, and more!
Thank you for using Yahoo! Music.
The Yahoo! Music team
2 TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4518
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
good riddance.
Posted by: sean808080
|
July 24, 2008 8:53 AM
When you look at DRM hardware that checks for every bit sent between video equipment today, situation looks very different.
Maybe we should say "call-home DRM" is on the way to the fiords.
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
Posted by: Andraz Tori | July 24, 2008 9:30 AM
"While the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store will no longer be available, Yahoo! Music has partnered with Rhapsody so you can still purchase your favorite tracks"
I can believe they have the balls to tell people to keep purchasing songs on the same email they tell them they are screwed.
Unbelievable
Posted by: yahoo customer | July 24, 2008 10:23 AM
Same old advise: please circumvent our own DRM, here's how :-)
Check out my post on the subject... Five companies that sold customers down the DRM-filled river.
Posted by: Steve | July 24, 2008 10:27 AM
Marshall
Any idea on how much of iTunes' sales are still DRM'd?
The way Apple dominates digital music sales, could DRM'd sales actually still be growing?
Posted by: James Lewin | July 24, 2008 1:07 PM
100% of iTunes sales are still DRM'd.
Posted by: Trevor Plantagenet | July 24, 2008 3:41 PM
human beings on a low class planet are greedy. unless something changes. but they will if they can maybe again. stay tuned
Posted by: gregorylent | July 24, 2008 3:57 PM
@Trevor: No, iTunes Plus tracks aren't "DRM'd"; they don't contain any digital rights management. They do contain metadata identifying what iTunes account they were purchased on, but that's not DRM-restricted any more than an unprotected PDF that contains "this PDF was generated for Your Name Here" on the title page is DRM-restricted. It's very easy to make the case that DRM can get in the way of legitimate use by the original purchaser. Making the case that tagging content with "this track was purchased by Your Name Here on July 24, 2008" gets in the way of legitimate use by the original purchaser is a lot harder.
Posted by: Watts | July 24, 2008 5:54 PM
Well, I'm betting that since Y!Music never really owned the remote licensing servers, it's probably not Yahoo!'s decision to turn off licensing and basically screw everyone. Still, I'm reminded of Ian Roger's screed against DRM pretty early on.
Yeppers, DRM sucks like hell. People generally accepted it because they had no idea how bad it was and generally just complained about how they couldn't load Y!Music tracks onto their iPod without thinking about the "why".
Granted, I'm waiting for Apple to pull the same stunt as millions of folks who grabbed the cheaper DRM'd tracks off of itunes suddenly realize they were only renting tracks too.
Posted by: jr | July 24, 2008 7:47 PM
On the subject of file backup, sharing and storage ...
Online backup is becoming common these days. It is estimated that 70-75% of all PC's will be connected to online backup services with in the next decade.
Thousands of online backup companies exist, from one guy operating in his apartment to fortune 500 companies.
Choosing the best online backup company will be very confusing and difficult. One website I find very helpful in making a decision to pick an online backup company is:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies in its directory and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
Posted by: Jennifer | July 24, 2008 8:59 PM
And that's exactly why I don't buy songs through these avenues (or at least that's what I like to say, haha). But seriously, what poor business practice by Yahoo.
Posted by: Alex | July 24, 2008 10:30 PM
If they cease the service to access the content legally purchased then may purchasers exercise the remedy to remove the DRM through means available on the web?
Posted by: Sam Brown | July 25, 2008 8:29 AM
This is why I buy music, in order of preference:
1)On cd. I can then convert to MP3, AAC, FLAC, etc.
2)Magnatune. They get it. They're not evil.
3)From iTunes, iTunes plus non-DRM only. AAC prefered.
4)From Amazonmp3, all DRM free.
I've also had an on-again, off-again relationship with eMusic, but I prefer more buying flexibility then they offer. It's a good service though.
Posted by: Steve Pinkham | July 25, 2008 6:52 PM
Hmm, nobody here mentions Creative Commons music. This is music that is free to copy to any place you want. There generally are some (very mild) restrictions as to what you can do.
A good place to check it out would be www.jamendo.com. It's not mainstream music you hear on the radio, but there are some very nice albums out there. Easy to find due to the voting system :-)
Posted by: FreeMusic | July 27, 2008 7:20 AM
All the world is listening music. Even the Chinese :) If someone closes the a part of it, people will listen it from somewhere else. Don't care much about it ;)
Posted by: Dizi izle | July 29, 2008 8:43 PM