Yahoo! to give coupons to former music customers
By Emily Price
Yahoo! has announced plans to provide coupons for customers who have purchased music from the Yahoo! Music Store that enable them to re-purchase their music from Rhapsody (Yahoo’s new music partner) when the store officially shuts down.
Yahoo! announced plans to shut down their music store in February creating a potential problem for users who have purchased music from the store in the past. In order to play music purchased from the store on a computer or other device the songs had to first be authorized through the store.
What that essentially meant for users was they needed to make a commitment to whatever device they wanted to listen to their music on, forever. Not exactly fair for people who have shelled out their money with the understanding they would be able to move the music around.
Yahoo! plans to take all of their subscriptions and transfer them over to Rhapsody. Rhapsody is currently one of the most popular music subscription services on the web. The coupons will enable them to re-purchase their music from Rhapsody, enabling them to play and move the music around after Yahoo’s DRM based servers go down. The company has also said they are willing to give refunds to customers who have a great deal of problems moving over to Rhapsody from yahoo.
Yahoo users are planned to be moved over to Rhapsody at their current pricing arrangements (currently $5.99 per month if paid yearly or $8.99 a month paid monthly), those prices are only going to available for limited time. Eventually Yahoo customers will have to move over to Rhapsody’s much higher pricing plan at $14.99 to take their music with them, or $12.99 for browser only tunes.
This whole debacle is a great demonstration in why DRM is a horrible, horrible thing. Had Yahoo!’s music store been DRM-free from the beginning then they could easily shut their doors right now, and not worry about customers having trouble wit their tunes. The move to Rhapsody is going to be a good once, even if it is more expensive.
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