Amazon’s DRM-free music service is really appealing these days. When it launched last September it got rave reviews because of the ease of use and the attractive prices, not to mention that whole DRM-free aspect. It was appealing when it launched and it’s getting even more appealing these days because of the situation we’re seeing with Yahoo right now.
Some of you have probably heard about what’s going on over at Yahoo right now – they have decided to stop issuing DRM authorization keys which essentially makes songs that people purchased and downloaded from the company worthless. Come September 30th, music owners will not be able to put the songs they purchased on multiple devices, or burn them to CD. Sound familiar? If it does, it’s because MSN’s music service did the same thing about a year ago.
This is turning into a real problem now that two major companies, both Microsoft and Yahoo, have decided to take down their servers that manage DRM and abandon their music services. Yahoo is hoping to keep customers who bought music happy by offering to compensate them for whatever they paid for their music. According to their FAQ, they are encouraging those who purchased music from the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store to burn all of their music to CDs because those files can be copied back to a computer without problem. For those who have problems, they say:
For any consumers that have problems with their DRM licenses after the store closes, our customer care group will provide coupons to the Rhapsody MP3 store so they can purchase an equivalent collection of MP3s. If any users have serious problems with this arrangement, we will provide refunds to them through our customer care service. This offer will remain open until December 31st, 2008.
We believe this plan will provide a fair deal to consumers who have purchased songs through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service, and will assist users in making the transition beyond DRM to more flexible, reliable and consumer-friendly digital media.
News.com recently proposed an interesting question – what if Apple stopped issuing DRM keys like MSN and Yahoo? At this point Apple is king of the digital media market so it’s not like it would happen anytime soon, but what if at some point it happened?
One thing we know of for sure right now is that DRM-free is the way to go these days because you just never know…
All these companies offering DRM-laced music make piracy look like a viable alternative.
DRM music = bad very bad
Exactly. That’s one of the reasons I love purchasing my music from Amazon. I don’t really have to worry about the DRM there.
Whenever I did purchase music through iTunes, I would immediately burn it on a CD-RW and rip it back on my PC to remove the DRM. Of course, these days I purchase music through Amazon.com unless for some reason they do not have it and iTunes does.
Yeah, that seems to be the route people are taking with Yahoo – burning the music to CD and then transfer it back to their computer. It’s a lot of hassle though if you ask me, not to mention the fact that you lose some of the quality.
It’s a pain in the butt, but if you can’t stand DRM, that would be the way to go.
In a weird way I’d like to see iTunes crumble and leave everyone who bought their DRM-ridden junk left in the dark. Maybe that will finally cause people to wake up and realize they’re being screwed by buying DRM music.
As far as I know Amazon MP3 is US only? So for the rest of the entire planet, there’s not that option. Bummer. I would buy from Amazon if I could so the record co’s are missing out there.
They launched less than a year ago so they are really still testing the waters. I know they said in January that they will be launching their MP3 service worldwide sometime this year.
[electronista.com]
I’m amazed it has had to take multiple huge companies to abandon DRM support for consumers to understand how bad DRM is (and still some don’t seem to realize..). I’ve been against DRM since the beginning, refusing to buy anything with it, for these exact reasons. Glad it’s finally making many people see what’s wrong with that system and how incredibly unfair it is, especially compared to the situations with CDs.
@Change: I read the first part of your comment and started to respond with “some people still don’t realize that DRM is bad” until I read that you said exactly that. There are also those that realize that DRM isn’t such a good thing but don’t explore other options because they are comfortable with iTunes and don’t want to pay more for DRM-free.