[Infowarrior] - Yahoo Music to self-destruct

[Richard Forno]

Yahoo pulls an MSN Music (only faster)

http://opinion.latimes.com/bitplayer/2008/07/yahoo-pulls-and.html

This afternoon, Yahoo alerted customers of its erstwhile downloadable  
music store that it would no longer provide support after Sept. 30  
(download the cheerful e-mail here). The upshot: starting Oct. 1, said  
customers won't be able to revive frozen tracks or move working ones  
onto new hard drives or computers, because Yahoo won't be providing  
any more keys to the songs' DRM wrappers. But hey, they can always buy  
MP3 versions from Yahoo's new partner Rhapsody!

Yahoo is cutting off support at an unusually speedy pace for a company  
that's not going out of business. Consumer backlash prompted Microsoft  
to extend support for tracks bought from the defunct MSN Music store  
by at least three years. And Sony, which closed its Connect music  
store in March, will continue to support those tracks until the end of  
the year. Perhaps Yahoo will feel a similar blast of heat and maintain  
its DRM servers for a while longer. Or maybe it sold so few tracks  
that no one will care.

I've already said that my outrage needle isn't really moved by  
decisions such as Yahoo's. Plenty of online music sellers crashed and  
burned before the major labels stopped demanding that 99-cent  
downloads be warped wrapped in DRM. Consumers should be used to this  
routine by now. Beyond that, buyers should have been backing up their  
purchases onto DRM-free CDs to protect their data. If they hadn't been  
doing so, the email from Yahoo Music should provide enough incentive  
to do it now. Yes, they may lose some fidelity in the translation from  
DRM'ed file to CD to MP3, depending on the bit rates involved. But  
that's a small price to pay for extended life in an era of accelerated  
obsolescence.

It's also worth saying that Yahoo Music's last two top executives,  
Dave Goldberg (now a VC) and Ian Rogers (now at Topspin Media) were  
both strong advocates of a DRM-free approach to music. That's why it  
would be ironic for consumers to be ticked off at Yahoo, which didn't  
have either the leverage to change the labels' policy or the patience  
to wait on the sidelines (a la Amazon.com). Nevertheless, consumers  
are most likely to direct their ire at the company that sold them the  
soon-to-be irreparable goods, not at the wholesaler responsible for  
the defect.