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Content Tagged with music + Web2.0
The Final Days of DRM: Yahoo Music Store Closing, Will Eat Your Purchased Music
Digital Rights Management technology is dying, it's becoming understood that hobbling tunes to enforce scarcity isn't the best way to monetize the music business online. What about all the suckers who bought DRM laden music in recent years, though? When the Yahoo! Music Store closes its doors this fall, the company announced today, past customers dependent on their music "phoning home" to get license approval before playing are out of luck. They'll be able to continue playing purchased tracks on a single computer, until they make any changes to their operating system.
The rise and fall of the Yahoo! Music Store will make for an interesting story some day, but for now the DRM story is particularly important.
Yahoo! now encourages customers to burn their music files to CDs. That may not be a terribly onerous requirement, but the point is that when you purchased a license for songs, everyone really meant it when they said this might not last forever.
As Jon Healey wrote on his LA TImes digital media blog, both Microsoft and Sony have tried to shutter their music services without providing ongoing support for already purchased material. Both faced a substantial consumer backlash. Sony extended their support through the end of this year and Microsoft did so for 3 more years. Healey suspects that too few people ever bought music from Yahoo! to create that kind of backlash and doesn't seem to think it's a big deal any way. Given that Yahoo! may be the most trafficked company on the web, we find this hard to agree with.
We think this is an instructive tale about technology, rights to user data and DRM - which is sure to rear its head again if content industries are unable to find more effective monetization strategies.
Here's the email Yahoo! Music sent out to customers last night:
The Yahoo! Music Store, along with the ability to purchase and download single songs and albums, will no longer be available as of September 30, 2008.Songs and albums that were purchased through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store are protected by a digital rights management system that requires a valid license key before they can be played on your computer.
After the Store closes, Yahoo! will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for music purchased from Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Yahoo! will no longer be able to authorize song playback on additional computers.
After September 30, 2008, you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems. Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer's operating system.
For any user who purchased tracks through Yahoo! Music Unlimited, we highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store on September 30, 2008. Backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved.
For further information on the closing of the Yahoo! Music Store, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions or contact Customer Care.
Stay tuned! While the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store will no longer be available, Yahoo! Music has partnered with Rhapsody so you can still purchase your favorite tracks. Plus, Yahoo! Music will continue to offer users a complete online music experience with the largest collection of music videos, Internet radio, exclusive artist features, music news, and more!
Thank you for using Yahoo! Music.
The Yahoo! Music team
ON Networks: Original programming for Original people_ | ON Networks
Three Hot Mixtape Services That Are Remaking the Art Form
Mixtapes just 'aint what they used to be. One of the most democratic forms of art collecting is being made even easier by a handful of fun new websites.
Is it legal? Will it last? We don't know and we don't know if we care. These services are such a joy to use that they reinvigorate our appreciation for what the social web can do.
Muxtape
The elegant simplicity, combined with the tech success of its New York founders, has made Muxtape the mindshare leader in the online mixtape market. Users upload up to 12 MP3 files and then publish their collection. The interface is like one big button and it's a lot of fun to explore different peoples' collections of favorites.
All kinds of mashups have been built on top of Muxtape. See, for example, our coverage of Muxtape With Coverflow [Mac] (pictured below), MuxtapeStumbler, MuxSeek Search Engine and MuxScrobbler - a script to synch your Muxtape listening with your Last.fm user profile.
Favtape
The newest entrant into this field is much easier to use for publishing collections. Favtape creates a Muxtape-like interface for listening to the full-length version of your Pandora or Last.fm favorited songs.
It's simple, but it's very cool. There are tie ins to Lyric Wiki, a ringtone search, the ability to listen to more songs that are similar or by the artist and other features. It's powered by the Seeqpod API, which must be one of the most popular APIs on the web lately.
Favtape just launched this week, but we really like it already.
Mixwit
MixWit is a Flash mixtape creator with a very nice interface and the ability to embed your player on a web page. See my example below. This service can have songs added by URL or through Seeqpod or Skreemr MP3 search.
Hint - click the play button below, or if you're reading this by RSS - click here to see this embedded player in action.
It's a relatively full featured Flash authoring environment and exemplifies the design possibilities that emerge from a confined space. The cassette tape border around images users upload is really visually appealing. It's all pretty easy to use and it's a whole lot of fun. It's more fun to use as a publisher than either of the services above and it might be more fun for listeners too.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/music/Three_Hot_Mixtape_Services_That_Are_Remaking_the_Art_Form';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';It appears that there are some performance issues, though, as the "menu" command often doesn't work with Mixwit. That should bring up a collection of other mixtapes.
The Changing World of Mixtapes
Different mixtape services serve different purposes. The point though is that this art form is becoming easier than ever before.
Mixtapes used to be something you put a lot of time and effort into, typically making one copy to give to one other person. The loss of that art form is a little sad. These services are something very different, they are very public and considering the free music widely available online - scarcity is no longer an issue.
Are these services legal? That's unclear; they are riding a thin line and legal decisions may be made about services like this in the coming years. Streaming, as opposed to full, direct downloads, is a different animal. The original mixtapes were arguably illegal as well, though, and what a loss the world would have suffered if that medium had been strangled.
Where's Your Mixtape?
We find the new mixtape publishing scene pretty heartwarming, in fact. We hope you'll enjoy testing out the services above - and leave us a link in comments to your mixtapes so we can all know what kind of music the RWW community likes to listen to!
CC photos used above include the following from Flickr: radio:cassette drawing from my primary school days by Alicia Yeah, "The Tree" by helmet13, An intense morning break over the Angels Bay, French Riviera by mamjodh