The music business is in rough shape. Yahoo is shutting down their whole music department and taking everyone down with them that bought in to their crap. They are removing their DRM (digital rights management) servers which determine whether or not to allow the computer to play the song. From the Washington Post:
The music will keep working on its current computer but can’t be transferred or re-licensed after operating system change like upgrading from XP to Vista or downgrading from Vista to XP. Yahoo’s suggested workaround includes burning the songs to CDs and ripping the CD back to the computer. Or, as Ars Technica puts it: “Sure, you’ll lose a bunch of blank CDs, sound quality, and all the metadata, but that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to listen to that music you lawfully acquired. Good thing you didn’t download it illegally or just buy it on CD!”
Yahoo claims it will reimburse on a case-by-case basis, but it’s looking like a big dodge. It’s the same DRM crap that Apple uses. Although they have been offering non-DRM tracks too for about a year, chances are the good music you are looking for (AKA not on the top 10 downloads) aren’t offered non-DRM. And even if they start offering all their music non-DRM (which they won’t), the 5 billion songs people have already downloaded will always be protected.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but seriously. Amazon.com/mp3. The full album prices are usually incredible, and a lot of their single songs are well below the $0.99 norm. And best of all, the songs are YOURS.
When the heck is the music industry going to get their heads out of their butts? And when are bands going to start releasing CDs on their own? And when the heck is Sufjan Stevens going to finally release some new crap, I’m getting antsy.
