Who Wants Yahoo Coupons? Yahoo Fire Sale At Rhapsody

Last week Yahoo! announced they were officially shutting down their music download store, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and rolling all current subscribers to Rhapsody. Yes, Yahoo! had a music download store. Of course you haven’t heard of it, that’s why they are shutting it down.

The problem is the hosting their DRM protected music will go off line in about 60 days, making music you’ve legally purchased inaccessible. Then they wonder why we like Limewire.

Seriously? People actually bought music from Yahoo! Music Unlimited?

Apparently so and now they are really pissed off. If this was two hundred years ago I can only imagine the locals grabbing their pitch forks and mobbing Yahoo! headquarters. (I’m channeling that scene in Frankenstein when the town storms the castle to capture the monster.) Instead people turned to the millennium equivalent; they got lawyers.

Now, upon request (yes, you must request) users can get coupons that allow them to re-download their music using Rhapsody’s new MP3 music store (which is a pretty decent store). There all tracks are free of digital rights management (DRM) and can be played, accessed and transferred to an infinite number of devices and computers.

On the whole it’s not a bad deal for the user; they are trading their protected WMA music for unprotected MP3 music at a higher bit rate for free. iTunes charges $.30 per track for this option. This is just one more nail in the DRM coffin.

Speaking of iTunes, what happens if, for whatever reason, iTunes has to shut down their servers? How many of you have bought FairPlay DRM protected songs from them?

You can check out how the other music download services rank or even see music reviews here on TopTenREVIEWS.

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