Yahoo! Music to drop support for purchased DRM tracks

That means if you bought any DRM-protected tracks from the now-shuttered Unlimited service, you won't be able to transfer them to another PC or music player come October. Déjà vu, anyone?

[Full disclosure, folks: Yahoo! Tech and Yahoo! Music are, of course, both divisions of Yahoo!.]

Yahoo! Music Unlimited users have been getting e-mails this week notifying them of them of the September 30, 2008 deadline, after which the servers that store license keys for any purchased Y! Music tunes will go dark.

Those keys are required to re-authorize purchased, DRM-protected music for a new PC or portable music device. Once the keys are gone, your songs will be stuck on whatever PC or music player they happen to be sitting on, permanently.

[Note: Just to be clear, the deadline only affects those who bought individual music tracks from Y! Music Unlimited; Y! Music subscription users are getting migrated to Rhapsody, and you can still stream music and videos over the Yahoo! Music site.]

At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me, I have to say—it's a disappointing move that mirrors MSN Music's initial decision to drop support for its DRM-protected songs after August 31, 2008. Microsoft wisely changed course and decided to extend DRM support for any previously purchased tracks through at least the end of 2011.

I got on the phone with Michael Spiegelman, the senior director for Yahoo! Music (no, we've never met), and asked: Isn’t all this pretty unfair, given that users paid good money for their tunes with the expectation that they'd be able to transfer them to other devices?

"I think for the people who purchased DRM tracks, it's not what we prefer to be doing, and we definitely want to apologize to those users," Spiegelman said. "We've had a pretty strong track record in speaking out about [DRM-free] MP3s, and this is exactly the situation that MP3s help us to avoid."

He continued: "But if you look at where the majority of activity was, it was really the people using the subscription service. When looking at transitioning this service over to Rhapsody, we really had to focus on how to help the largest amount of people."

But would it really be that expensive to keep the DRM servers running, at least in the short term? After all, MSN Music chose to do so.

"We can't really talk to the specific numbers [in terms of cost]," Spiegelman told me, adding that Yahoo! uses a third-party service to host its DRM license keys. "To be honest, it's a question of whether we want to spend the money supporting DRM tracks, versus spending that money on what people really do want [subscription and/or DRM-free music]."

Then how about replacing any purchased, DRM'd Yahoo! Music tracks with the equivalent MP3s from Rhapsody, and be done with it?

"We'll take those situations in a case-by-case fashion," Spiegelman said. "We will be able to help users out who have a large number of tracks."

So, yes, an MP3-for-DRM trade could be in the cards?

"We're not saying that that would be an impossible option," he said. "We'll see how much of a demand there is for it."

Well ... frankly, I'd hope that anyone who paid for Yahoo! Music Unlimited tracks would get the MP3 option. Do that, and no more complaints from me.

Update: Yahoo! Music reps just told the AP that they'll be offering coupons to any Unlimited customers who want to buy MP3 versions of their DRM-protected songs through Rhapsody.