

When Yahoo announced that it would follow Sony Connect and MSN Music into dissolution by terminating its DRM-ed music store, customers of the store and media analysts were understandably irate. But we can all take some comfort in Yahoo's vague offer to reimburse those who were unfortunate enough to have paid for PlaysForSure DRM-ed downloads from the Yahoo Music service, although details remain scarce.

"You'll be compensated for whatever you paid for the music," Yahoo spokeswoman Carrie Davis told InformationWeek. "We haven't said exactly what we will do, but we will take care of our customers."

Songs purchased from Yahoo Music will continue to play on computersafter the service goes offline on September 30th, but cannot belicensed to new computers or devices after that, meaning that they'll eventually become unplayable.

Yahoo Music's FAQ

on the topic says subscribers to its unlimited music service will have their accounts converted to Rhapsody, but does not specify how those whopurchased songs outright will be compensated for this loss. The company already upset MusicMatch subscribers by converting them to Yahoo Music following the company's purchase of MusicMatch for $160 million, so it'll be interesting to see how it handles this crisis.

One possibility is cash, of course, but part of the problem with that is that those files were never worth as much as people were paying for them in the first place because they were locked down by Microsoft DRM.

That leaves the idea of an exchange program that would convertpurchased music to a new format. Yahoo Music customers would probablyprefer MP3, and Davis saidthat's an option. However, doing so would appear to violate Yahoo'sagreements with the labels. Some sort of interoperable DRM

option (that would include Apple's FairPlay) couldallow Yahoo tomake good on promises to users and labels alike.

Every time a DRM-ed music store goes under offering only lame adviceto consumers such as "burn the music to audio CDs and re-rip them," as Sony Connect and MSN Music have done, the music industry at large loses a chance to convince us that DRM-ed music has value.

Update (7/31): A Rhapsody spokesman confirmed to Wired.com that the Yahoo customers will receive vouchers for the tracks in the unprotected MP3 format at the Rhapsody MP3 store, despite the fact that Yahoo's original agreements with the labels almost certainly stipulated that the tracks be DRM-protected.

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