Yahoo has announced the closure of its music store, leaving users unable to access the songs they have purchased. Starting, September 30 users will not be able to purchase songs from the Yahoo Music Unlimited Store.
Songs and albums that are purchased through Yahoo Music Unlimited Store are protected by a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system that requires a valid license key for playing them on the PC. The company will be taking off this license key servers offline on the same day the store shuts.
After the store closes, users will not have access to these license keys. So the purchased tracks will continue playing on the existing authorized PCs but not on any other machine. Moreover, re-licensing these songs will not be possible, which means users won't be able to play the songs if they change or update their PCs' operating system. In order to deal with this, Yahoo has recommended users to back up their purchased tracks to an audio CD before the store closes.
An important point is that this deadline affects only those who bought individual music tracks from the store. Though the store will be shut, the subscription users will still be able to purchase and stream music through Rhapsody. For details on the Yahoo-Rhapsody deal click here
With this announcement coming from Yahoo, the death of DRM technology seems imminent. Earlier this year, Microsoft had also announced the closing of MSN music store after August 31 this year, but decided to keep the DRM authorization servers running through 2011. Read more on the death of DRM here.
Friday, July 25, 2008
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