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Yahoo! Music Store Support Dead by Sept. 30

by jordan | July 25, 2008 at 12:32 pm | 74 views | 1 comment

Ownership of digital content remains a huge sticking point between purchasers and vendors, as buyers are led to believe that they're buying a product, whereas vendors insist on treating it as a lease.

Several months after the Microsoft MSN Music Store snafu, Yahoo announced Wednesday night that support for the Yahoo! Music Store will shut down as of Sept. 30, 2008.

So what happens when those servers that remotely host your music-- ostensibly your property-- get shut down? Evidently, you're out of luck...

I've just spoken with a Yahoo spokeswoman who said that the move was announced earlier this year as part of Yahoo Music's partnership with RealNetwork's Rhapsody music service. Yahoo Music users will be allowed to transfer their music libraries to the new service.

That's fine for people who just used Yahoo's subscription service. If they choose not to make the jump to Rhapsody, well, they knew going in that when they stopped paying they would lose their libraries. But what about the people who purchased songs from Yahoo Music? That music was also wrapped in DRM.

With this announcement coming from Yahoo, the death of DRM technology seems imminent.

We keep hearing this, but we keep seeing DRM in use, and it never makes a product more valuable to the end user. Ultimately, if you want to keep your customers, don't make it more worthwhile for them to steal your product than to buy it.