[Statch]

I'm one of the unfortunate Yahoo Music! customers. After I read the posting here saying they were going to offer a remedy, I wrote them and here's the answer I got back:

"If you have problems with your track licenses after the store closes, we
will provide coupons to the Rhapsody MP3 store so you can purchase an
equivalent collection of MP3s. These coupons will not be available until
the Yahoo! Music Unlimited store has closed. This offer will remain open
until December 31st, 2008."

It looks like they're only going to compensate people who have problems. (I plan on being one of them.)

I'm probably a good example of what they've done to the industry by this. I subscribed about two years ago. I hadn't bought music in 10 years before that. In the two years, I've bought about 30 CDs worth of music, because I can finally try the music before buying it. But I don't plan to switch to Rhapsody because of the higher cost, and they've left me with these DRM tracks that I'm going to have trouble using in the future. I spent about an hour researching the best way to convert my tracks into DRM-free MP3s and have realized how much time it's going to take. I feel completely cheated, and won't touch DRM'ed music again.

I do buy DRM ebooks all the time, but I'm reconsidering that now too because of this. For recent books, looks like the options are going back to print books or doing something illegal.

I have to wonder how badly both of these industries want customers! If their business plans call for driving away good customers, they're a rousing success.