Yahoo! Music's death at age 3 warns of DRM's risk
Yahoo did its best to stage a rival to Apple Inc.'s iTunes, but after three years of lagging results, the Internet icon is putting its Yahoo! Music service to rest and leaving subscribers with copy-protected music libraries that can't be transfered to new computers.
After trying everything to attract customers from rock bottom pricing and all-you-can-eat subscription specials to news and original programming, Yahoo in an email to customers warned that it would close its Yahoo! Music online store permanently as of September 30th.
While any such store closing is unfortunate for those who shop regularly at the store, the news is proving to be especially damaging for customers of the company's Yahoo! Music Unlimited service, which offers both an all-you-can-eat subscription as well as the option of paying extra for permanent downlods. Yahoo at the end of September will shut down the servers that grant licenses for the digital rights management (DRM) that protects the music files, allowing playback of these longer-lasting songs and barring unauthorized copying.
Although this music will continue to play after the store shutdown, the lack of a license server after that date effectively creates a time bomb for customers: reinstalling the operating system or making other changes that erase the licenses on the computer will render the songs unplayable regardless of the user's backup copies. Yahoo is aware of this and is pushing many of its customers to burn pure audio CDs and remove the restrictions before it's too late.
"We highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store," Yahoo says. "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."
The experience underscores the potential risk behind DRM, which by its nature is dependent on a company's willingness to maintain an Internet server ready to authorize access. For customers of Microsoft's long defunct MSN Music service, the experience is already a familiar one: many of its purchasers were threatened with losing their collections a month ahead of Yahoo until public pressure forced Microsoft to keep its DRM servers running until 2011.
It's this danger that prompted two of Yahoo! Music's chiefs to clamor for unprotected music before their departures, though the hesitance of major labels to offer freely copyable music at the time contributed to their departure.
Apple's iTunes Store is unlikely to face the same situation in the future given its relative success in music sales, but its own FairPlay-protected songs hold a similar danger for users who restore or replace their Macs and PCs. The company also has no provision to automatically restore missing songs and usually only grants a one-time exception for those who lose their music without a backup in place.
Still, pressure from Apple and other online providers are making it increasingly unlikely that stores as fragile as MSN Music or Yahoo! Music will reappear. The iPod maker's chief executive, Steve Jobs, has said in an open letter that removing DRM was essential to offering interoperability in music that would eliminate these restrictions and promptly followed suit with unguarded iTunes Plus songs, which now make up a large portion of Apple's catalog. Amazon MP3 and a slew of other stores have taken the same direction and offer some or all of their music DRM-free.
After trying everything to attract customers from rock bottom pricing and all-you-can-eat subscription specials to news and original programming, Yahoo in an email to customers warned that it would close its Yahoo! Music online store permanently as of September 30th.
While any such store closing is unfortunate for those who shop regularly at the store, the news is proving to be especially damaging for customers of the company's Yahoo! Music Unlimited service, which offers both an all-you-can-eat subscription as well as the option of paying extra for permanent downlods. Yahoo at the end of September will shut down the servers that grant licenses for the digital rights management (DRM) that protects the music files, allowing playback of these longer-lasting songs and barring unauthorized copying.
Although this music will continue to play after the store shutdown, the lack of a license server after that date effectively creates a time bomb for customers: reinstalling the operating system or making other changes that erase the licenses on the computer will render the songs unplayable regardless of the user's backup copies. Yahoo is aware of this and is pushing many of its customers to burn pure audio CDs and remove the restrictions before it's too late.
"We highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store," Yahoo says. "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."
The experience underscores the potential risk behind DRM, which by its nature is dependent on a company's willingness to maintain an Internet server ready to authorize access. For customers of Microsoft's long defunct MSN Music service, the experience is already a familiar one: many of its purchasers were threatened with losing their collections a month ahead of Yahoo until public pressure forced Microsoft to keep its DRM servers running until 2011.
It's this danger that prompted two of Yahoo! Music's chiefs to clamor for unprotected music before their departures, though the hesitance of major labels to offer freely copyable music at the time contributed to their departure.
Apple's iTunes Store is unlikely to face the same situation in the future given its relative success in music sales, but its own FairPlay-protected songs hold a similar danger for users who restore or replace their Macs and PCs. The company also has no provision to automatically restore missing songs and usually only grants a one-time exception for those who lose their music without a backup in place.
Still, pressure from Apple and other online providers are making it increasingly unlikely that stores as fragile as MSN Music or Yahoo! Music will reappear. The iPod maker's chief executive, Steve Jobs, has said in an open letter that removing DRM was essential to offering interoperability in music that would eliminate these restrictions and promptly followed suit with unguarded iTunes Plus songs, which now make up a large portion of Apple's catalog. Amazon MP3 and a slew of other stores have taken the same direction and offer some or all of their music DRM-free.
Comments
You've upped the ante in additional alienation of music buyers! What a wonderful legacy from Hilary Rosen. Keep it up!
2. Cheers to those people that now know better than to buy DRM protected tracks. Buy used CD's instead.
Steve Jobs, has said in an open letter that removing DRM was essential to offering interoperability in music that would eliminate these restrictions and promptly followed suit with unguarded iTunes Plus songs, which now make up a large portion of Apple's catalog.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Yeah, if by 'large portion' you mean 'very little of'
++
DRM is bad for everyone and iTunes is still mostly DRM.
Yeah, if by 'large portion' you mean 'very little of'
++
DRM is bad for everyone and iTunes is still mostly DRM.
But at least Apple iTunes allow you to remove the DRM when burning to disk. Thus preserving your purchases for any computer. Jobs made sure of that since day one.
So we're stuck with DRM. Finding a used CD of a track and then driving or having it shipped is major hassle compared to point-and-click, so although there ARE alternatives, they're not great ones.
Luckily, from the leader is the safest kind to get: Apple's music business is so successful that a) they're unlikely to vanish any time soon, and b) if they did, their system has so much value and such a HUGE user base that it would likely be taken over by another company rather than just quietly buried. Either way, the authorization services would likely continue.
I still choose non-DRM (iTunes Plus or Amazon) first when I can. But iTunes has some music the others don't.
In the long term, when DRM for music finally dies off completely, the solution is to burn to disc (or use some potential tool that will allow us to fake that) and re-import as a lossless format, preferably compressed like Apple Lossless. Now you've got the FULL quality of your original iTunes DRM purchase, identical, bit for bit. But no DRM! You've escaped the system. And still more compact than raw CD audio data. The downside is it will still take up more storage than MP4/AAC or MP3. But by that far-off day, storage will be cheap!
You can even do that now--but there's no pressing need, so I'll conserve space (and my time/effort) for now.
I grudgingly accept DRM--from Apple--in certain cases for now. But I won't forever!
DRMs send the opposite message the RIAA was hoping for. DRMs have shown over and over again that the only safe way to own your music files is to use P2P. Using legit stores only exposes the end user to loosing everything on a seller's whim.
Now there's something I would pay good money for.
This is way off track, but does any one know what the heck ever happened to getting The Beatles collection on iTunes?
Now there's something I would pay good money for.
The last rumor I read was that Paul needed to finalize the divorce with a gold digger - she's already getting close to the equivalent to $50M only for having been married for four years. If he announces a deal before the divorce is final, the woman would fight for more.
Yahoo! is losing weight fast. Does Yahoo! have cancer?
Not even funny.
But at least Apple iTunes allow you to remove the DRM when burning to disk. Thus preserving your purchases for any computer. Jobs made sure of that since day one.
Way to be a blatant fanboy. This is exactly what Yahoo is urging its costumers to do. The only way to remove drm-protected music from iTunes is to burn as audio cds and rip those back into the computer. You can't remove the drm just by transferring them onto a disk as aac files directly.
One can buy shareware to remove DRM, but just a little work it can also be done for free.
The steps are DRM selection to AIFF convert AIFF back to MP3 using a Free converter.
The labels hate that Apple has so much power in their industry, and will continue to take steps against Apple. Such as refusing to let Apple sell DRM-free tracks for the .99 they allow for other online stores. (Failing stores, which the RIAA likes because they're no threat to the status quo. You can bet if Amazon ever gains dominance the RIAA won't be pleased about the .99 DRM-free songs anymore.)
So we're stuck with DRM. Finding a used CD of a track and then driving or having it shipped is major hassle compared to point-and-click, so although there ARE alternatives, they're not great ones.
Luckily, from the leader is the safest kind to get: Apple's music business is so successful that a) they're unlikely to vanish any time soon, and b) if they did, their system has so much value and such a HUGE user base that it would likely be taken over by another company rather than just quietly buried. Either way, the authorization services would likely continue.
I still choose non-DRM (iTunes Plus or Amazon) first when I can. But iTunes has some music the others don't.
In the long term, when DRM for music finally dies off completely, the solution is to burn to disc (or use some potential tool that will allow us to fake that) and re-import as a lossless format, preferably compressed like Apple Lossless. Now you've got the FULL quality of your original iTunes DRM purchase, identical, bit for bit. But no DRM! You've escaped the system. And still more compact than raw CD audio data. The downside is it will still take up more storage than MP4/AAC or MP3. But by that far-off day, storage will be cheap!
You can even do that now--but there's no pressing need, so I'll conserve space (and my time/effort) for now.
I grudgingly accept DRM--from Apple--in certain cases for now. But I won't forever!
Yahoo should be forced to distribute a patch to make its music player software ignore Yahoo's DRM wrapper and play the track regardless of whether it has an authorization from the home server or not. Yeah, I suppose people will be able to distribute the track through P2P with other people using Yahoo's music player, but since so much music is sold by Amazon and Apple without any DRM at all that old argument doesn't mean so much anymore.
I fully agree.
I have bought 216 tracks from iTunes and only 72 have been DRM-free - exactly one third. So in my experience iTunes is still primarily a DRM-using service.
My ratio is the other way around, two-thirds DRM-free (iTunes Plus) and one third still DRM. Most of them were upgraded after purchase to iTunes Plus, just today I upgraded another song.
The last rumor I read was that Paul needed to finalize the divorce with a gold digger - she's already getting close to the equivalent to $50M only for having been married for four years. If he announces a deal before the divorce is final, the woman would fight for more.
And I believe this was settled some time back ? so what's the hold-up?
Skip
Not even funny.
Your post was lame too, what's your point?
And I believe this was settled some time back … so what's the hold-up?
You're right, in May 2008. I don't know what the hold-up is.