Yahoo Offers Compensation For Unplayable Music

DrEnter writes "According to this article, Yahoo will offer some compensation after they turn off their DRM servers and Yahoo Music customers will no longer be able to access their music. The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo's new partner, RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the MP3 format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who 'have serious problems with this arrangement,' Yahoo said. Nice to see them step up and do something, especially without trading one DRM scheme for another."

Comments

Surprising

[EdIII]

I really am surprised that Yahoo stepped up like this. Really Surprised.

The offer to receive a DRM-free MP3 seems pretty darn reasonable to me. I wonder why Microsoft did not stand up and offer anything remotely as reasonable as this considering their size when they were going to shut down their DRM servers.

DRM has always been a less valuable product inherently, but Yahoo has backed up the customer and made sure they will be able to play the music they paid for.

I almost feel.... hopeful.

Good for Yahoo. They did the right thing.

Duh... they had to.

[LostCluster]

"Company complies with rules to avoid chargebacks" should be the headline.

When you sell a perpetual license that needs to be reauthorized every so often, you have to either keep your license server up forever, or ofter to give customers all their money back.

We saw this happen when Google Video shut down. At first Google thought they could get away with giving out Google Checkout credits, but the credit card industry upheld chargebacks so they had to refund all credit card charges too.

Re:Duh... they had to.

[compro01]

Just because a contract says something doesn't mean it is legally valid.

Re:Real player

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

How is this offtopic? Experiences with Real Player were so unsatisfactory that many people I know won't use ever use a RealNetworks product.

Perhaps it's off-topic because, as even the summary points out, the alternative being offered is in unprotected MP3 format: hardly a proprietary RealNetworks product, nor likely to suffer from the same problems that plagued early versions of RealPlayer. One man's joke is another man's unconstructive and irrelevant cheap shot; YMMV.