Yahoo Music Store shutters, leaving customers in the cold

Jordan Golson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:11:39 -0400

The Yahoo Music Store is closing its doors on September 30, 2008. No surprise there -- many digital music stores have closed lately, including small shops as well larger brands like Sony 'Connect'.

The interesting part is that music sold through the Yahoo Music Store is DRM encoded, requiring a "phone home" to the Yahoo store to play. But after September 30, there won't be anyone "home" to answer. The letter sent to Yahoo Music customers says "after the Store closes, Yahoo! will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for music purchased... Yahoo! will no longer be able to authorize song playback on additional computers, transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems."

Yahoo recommends users back up their purchased tracks to CD before the store closes. I guess they weren't really "purchased" if the DRM activation scheme goes away? More like "loaned" until the store goes out of business.

Dara Ward, a Yahoo Music Store customer told The Standard she felt "a bit burned, as I did not receive an email from them with an explanation. I actually logged into the store to download a song last night (which they didn't have) and found out about it that way."

She had been purchasing from Yahoo because it supports her two portable music players, a Dell Jukebox and a Creative Zen Jukebox, which industry-leader iTunes doesn't support. "I'll start looking at other options."

Aside from users who are now stuck, this is probably good news for Yahoo shareholders -- closing down unproductive products is something that Yahoo has been a slow to do in recent years.

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