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Posted by ben.mathew on 07/13/06 19:50
This is a warning about using Yahoo's music download service. The
feature
allows users to download songs for $0.99 each and play it on your PC,
presumably forever. This feature is not advertised at all on the Yahoo
Music
site. They heavily promote their "Unlimited" subscription service.
Needless
to say, there is very little documentation about their download
service.
I purchased approximately 40 songs from this service. The music played
fine. However, the hard drive on my PC crashed. I had to replace the
hard drive. I was able to recover the songs from my portable device
(mp3 player). However, they are unplayable on the PC because the new
hard drive makes the the digital rights management (DRM) software
think this is a new PC.
The other music services from which I had purchased songs quickly
resolved
my problem by providing new license for the new hard drive. MSN music,
buy.com, Wal-mart and Napster either restored the licenses online or
with a quick phone call. Let it be noted that these other services
allow
users to copy songs to other PCs as a backup.
With Yahoo Music, restoration was impossible and a nightmare. After
several
email exchanges, tech support concluded that their service has no
provision for
sending replacement licenses like other services. They sent me to
billing
to initiate a refund. Billing says they have no way to issue refunds
for
songs that were downloaded, and sent me back to tech support to get a
new license file. Tech support said they didn't know what billing was
talking about and sent me back. At billing, they finally concluded
that
they can't issue a refund. This confusion within Yahoo about their
policy on restoring downloaded music is frustrating.
I protested that hard drive failures are common occurrences (very
likely to
fail within 3-5 years) and Yahoo Music has no protection against this.
Yahoo
seems to have no provision to copy songs to a different PC. Therefore,
your
downloads are only good for a couple of years. Your downloaded music
will be
unplayable and your money wasted.
In short, users should be aware of Yahoo's policy that differs from
that
provided by most other services and the limited useful time period of
the music on a single PC.
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