Yahoo! Music for the Masses - This Sounds Too Good
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The catch for some people is that the service uses DRM (digital rights management) files. In order to offer popular mainstream artists, Yahoo has to put some restrictions on the music. Services like eMusic put no restrictions on the mp3s they sell, but they offer independent, smaller bands that most people wouldn't drop a monthly fee for; eMusic has a few pop bands, but it can’t get many contracts for big artists from recording companies in that format. While eMusic is a good service in a niche market, Yahoo doesn’t want this. They want the bigger pie, music you hear on the radio and MTV.
Yahoo is showing us the future of buying music, and it isn’t “buy to own.” The DRM restrictions are the structure of Yahoo’s plan. As long as you subscribe you can listen to whatever you want, which is incredible freedom. The DRM basically makes sure that the tracks you download stop working when you give them away unauthorized or stop paying. This may sound like a bad deal for some, but it really isn’t. It may take time, but people will see the benefits of leaving the "buy to own" model. While Kazaa addicts might be spoiled by their unrestricted downloads, Kazaa (and other download programs) isn’t a legal venue for buying music so it’s not even comparable. If you intend to use your mp3s for legal purposes, DRM shouldn’t automatically raise objections.
This kind of DRM isn’t as troublesome as iTunes’ DRM, since what you are buying is a subscription. Customers of iTunes buy files; if their hard drive dies, their files are gone and they must pay to re-download. iTunes is still a part of the “pay to own” scheme, and as such it cannot offer full access to as vast a music collection as Yahoo can. When Yahoo customers pay to download music, they are buying listening rights and not files. If they lose the files, they can just re-download them with no trouble at all. Yahoo is breaking the established mold of buying a CD or a song that can be damaged or lost. Even with DRM restrictions that cripple mp3s if the subscription is cancelled, Yahoo’s service seems more like freedom; it gives you any music anytime.
The true catch of this service (which will probably keep many people from joining for the time being) is that the DRM restricts what mobile devices downloaded songs play on. And the number of mobile mp3 players that correctly play the protected WMA files is very limited. Players need to be Plays-for-Sure subscription-compatible to work. What does this mean? Well, most importantly, iPods won’t work. Apple didn’t build support for Microsoft’s protected files into their player, probably because it’s not in their own best interest (though that may change if subscription services using WMAs become as popular as iTunes). iPod users make up the dominant market share of hard drive and flash players, and they will probably stick to iTunes.
Some companies that offer compatible players are Creative, Dell, and iRiver. You can check out the few that are currently available here. This limitation seems quite a detriment to an otherwise good idea. Even though this is a major hindrance, you can expect to see more of these kinds of players as these services become more popular. Until then, Yahoo is still good for playing directly through your computer, granted you have Windows XP or 2000 (I guess the other 5% of desktop PCs can stick to iTunes too).
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