Yahoo frees the music

Today, Yahoo offered the peace pipe to its music customers. The company said it would give coupons or refunds to those who discover that they can't play the music they acquired when the Yahoo Music Store closes its doors Sept. 30.

A week ago, Los Angeles Times editorial writer Jon Healey broke the story and revealed the ramifications of the music store's closure. The news came with a harsher announcement: Yahoo was yanking technical support that would allow customers to relicense the music if they transferred tracks to another computer or tried to play songs after changing operating systems. In other words, poof, there goes the digital music collection.

The upshot, Healey said, was that "customers won't be able to revive frozen tracks or move working ones onto new hard drives or computers, because Yahoo won't be providing any more keys to the songs' DRM wrappers."

Yahoo's decision today was a huge concession but not a big surprise, Healey says. Yahoo appears to be following the footsteps of Microsoft, which more than a month ago closed its MSN music store, angering its customers, then did a reversal and said it would continue to provide the technical support needed for people to listen to their music for three years.

The controversy adds fuel to the ongoing debate over the future of selling music with digital copying protections -- will people still trust buying music with digital copying protections if access to the music is shakier than savings in a failed bank?

-- Michelle Quinn

Photo: Caged birds in India. Credit: Piyal Adhikary / European Pressphoto Agency

Comments

[Joseph S.]

It's no wonder these stores are closing operations and not supporting the licenses they've sold anymore. Yahoo and other companies in the digital music world should look at trials and errors and recoveries of artist's sites like HalfordMusic.com. Since I love the music, I stooped down and purchased music with DRM. While I found it to be just a hassle - we all know the work around - burn a CD from the DRM files and then rip them to DRM-free MP3 or DRM-free WMA. Well recently HalfordMusic.com stated that they are no longer supporting DRM licenses anymore, however unlike the companies in the article, this store is running better than ever by simply replacing their DRM files with DRM-free files so all past customers like myself can go back to our download libraries and re-download the tracks we purchased for no charge. This was HalfordMusic.com's solution to the DRM-free leap while honoring their obligation to past customers.

While I never purchased from Yahoo or MSN, I have purchased music from ITunes (of which I'm using iTunes less and less). I'm loving Amazon.com's MP3 store and file delivery structure and exploring more and more artists like Rob Halford who are selling directly to fans DRM-free.