Yahoo Compensating Music Store Orphans

Alas, ye poor huddled masses yearning to be able to listen to the music you damn well paid for!

As our resident Madman told us yesterday, Yahoo is closing its online music store, shutting down its servers and thereby preventing former customers from listening to their music, which must have its DRM rights renewed from those soon-to-be-extinct servers.

Naturally, this upset Yahoo Music customers.

Yahoo's new line is that they'll be giving out refunds for anyone who purchased songs deliberately (in addition to the monthly subscription), as well as allowing active subscribers to transfer their membership to Rhapsody. Which is where they should have been in the first place, if iTunes is out of the question.

But the real meat lies in yet another option - Yahoo Music rep Carrie Davis said that customers ought to be able to convert their songs into unprotected MP3s. How that will happen will be interesting to see, and I wouldn't be surprised if it actually doesn't happen - it makes far too much sense!

The cracks in DRM will only grow more obvious as DRM models age: maintaining an active server to authorize music sounds like a great way to increase overhead and waste as much time, money and energy as possible. Over time I have faith that companies will recognize that DRM works more like a legal placebo than anything else, but for the moment customers should still be wary when signing up for music services: they make music piracy seem downright legit.

Yahoo to compensate music store refugees [Electronista]