Anyone who bought music through Yahoo’s Launch service have the option of receiving either a refund, or non-DRM’d copies of any music they bought while the service was running.
Yahoo got it right, although this could cost them, financially. As Techdirt editor Mike Masnick said today, “that’s what the company gets for agreeing to a DRM’d solution in the first place, rather than trusting its instincts and telling the labels to ditch the DRM years ago.” Masnick is right; this is a pretty obvious example of why DRM shouldn’t be attached to purchased music in the first place.
I almost wish I had some Yahoo Launch music to get refunded. But I’m not much on downloading. I still buy CD’s (yes, I hear the collective gasp of horror from GeekNews readers). Of course, I don’t buy CD’s new most of the time, I buy them used at library sales and on half.com or even eBay. Yes, I have an iPod loaded with at least 4,000 songs, but those all came from CD’s that I own and so when my iTunes crashes or my iPod dies I can still recreate my playlists if I have to. That, and sometimes I just like the quality that I get from the CD version of the music. MP3’s are great, but there is certainly loss of quality in such compressed formats.
I’m glad to see Yahoo doing the right thing for its customers. I am as surprised as everyone else, though, that they would take this step. More times than not we seem to get abused and used by the system and big companies that don’t really care about its customers. It’s a refreshing change, that’s for sure.