Yahoo! Music to offer coupons for purchased DRM tracks

About a week after announcing it would no longer support DRM-protected songs purchased from its now-shuttered Unlimited service, Yahoo! Music has apparently decided to hand out coupons to anyone looking to replace their soon-to-be-stranded tunes with MP3s.

[Full disclosure: Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! Tech are, as you can probably guess, both divisions of Yahoo!.]

A Yahoo! Music rep told the AP that after September 30, 2008—the day when servers holding Unlimited DRM license keys goes dark—any Unlimited customers who "have problems" with their tunes can request coupons for copy protection-free MP3 replacements through Y! Music partner Rhapsody.

The new policy is reflected on Yahoo! Music's FAQ, which also notes that if users have "serious problems with this arrangement," they can get a refund. The offer is good through December 31, 2008, according to the FAQ.

Yahoo! Music announced last week that after September 30, 2008, it will turn off the third-party servers that store license keys for purchased, digital rights management-protected Yahoo! Music Unlimited tunes. Once that happens, the songs will be stuck forever on whatever PC or music player they happen to be sitting on.

The Yahoo! Music FAQ had previously suggested burning any DRM-protected tunes to CD and then ripping them to MP3s, although you'd lose audio quality (and a good chunk of your time) in the process.

Yahoo!'s music service announced that it was shuttering its Unlimited subscription service back in April, and is in the midst of transferring former Unlimited subscribers to Rhapsody.

MSN Music stepped into a similar controversy in April, when it announced it would drop support for its DRM-protected songs after August 31, 2008. Microsoft later decided to extend the deadline through the end of 2011.

Related:
Yahoo offers coupons for music that stops working [AP, via Yahoo! News]