Yahoo’s music DRM servers going down
By TJ Kirchner
Another one bites the dust, as Yahoo announces it will be shutting down its DRM servers as of September 30th, 2008. Those customers that relied on these servers to authenticate their music when they moved between different computers and portable devices will have to find new music elsewhere. However, Yahoo says that it’s not leaving their consumers high and dry.
“You’ll be compensated for whatever you paid for the music,” Carrie Davis, spokeswoman for Yahoo Music, told InformationWeek. “We haven’t said exactly what we will do, but we will take care of our customers.”
The reimbursement process will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Consumers will have to go to the FAQ page on yahoo music and contact customer care first. After that Yahoo will either give their money back or give them a new copy of their music that’s DRM free.
Although Yahoo is taking care of its customers, not everyone will be eligible for reimbursement. Those customers who have music subscriptions will be transferred over to Rhapsody, the RealNetworks music store, which offers the same benefits for the same price.
This sounds somewhat familiar. Earlier this year, Microsoft relented their music services with MSN Music. Although, it has agreed to keep their authentication servers up for another 3 years, giving people a chance to enjoy their music a little while longer or transfer over.
Maybe companies like Yahoo and Microsoft wouldn’t have had this problem if they went DRM-Free in the first place. DRM is expensive. It takes a lot of time and money to develop and maintain the infrastructure that upholds the DRM technology.
I admit that Yahoo Music hardly got their feet off the ground, since they only had about 400,000 customers since it started, according to Digital Media. However, after all this reimbursement is finished, I wonder how much profit was made from this.
In the long run nobody wins. Consumers are feeling boxed in by being forced to stay with one music player, one brand, or one computer (or a small set of devices). Plus, online retailers have to shell out a lot of money to enforce DRM.
Furthermore, the music industry hasn’t received any more revenue since DRM was implemented. And it’s not like the rate at which people are pirating music tracks has gone down at all anyway. In short, the system doesn’t work.
A lot of companies are switching to DRM-Free music, including Amazon, Random House audio books, and even iTunes. As a result, they’ve received more business than ever. The public wants the freedom to put their music on any device as much as they want. Why didn’t Yahoo understand that?
Related:
Entry was posted
on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 9:20 am
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by TJ Kirchner.
Stumble It!
