Yahoo! has had a music download service for a few years, but there hasn't been sufficient interest in it and now it has been announced that it is to close. This is just yet another online music service that's closing and others include MSN Music and Sony Connect.
The problem is that all these online music services were supplying DRM protected tracks - DRM (Digital Rights Managment) is basically copy protection that limits what you can do with copyright music. Anyone that has bought music tracks from Yahoo! will still be able to play them, but the DRM servers will be closed down at the end of September.
This will prevent anyone from moving their music to another computer. The tracks are stuck on the computer they are on and there's no way to transfer them to another computer. Computers date very quickly and eventually they break down and when this happens you'll lose all your music.
This is just one of the problems associated with buying DRM protected music over the internet and there are others. For example, a disk fault could wipe out your whole collection that you paid a lot of money for. Would any of the online music services let you download all your music again? Not likely. Of course, you could back up your music, but hardly anyone bothers to run backup software.
It seems to me that the best way to build up a music collection is to buy the CDs and to rip them with your favourite music player/organiser. If your computer develops a fault or you buy a new one, you can simply rip your CDs again. If you have the original discs it solves a lot of problems.
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
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