Defunct MSN Music Store Gives Another Reason to Dislike DRM

The MSN Music store has been defunct for some time, since Microsoft launched Zune Marketplace, but the license servers have been up, meaning customers could continue to transfer and play songs between computers. In an email sent Tuesday though, MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett told users to prepare themselves:

I am writing to let you know that as of August 31, 2008, Microsoft will change the level of support to be offered for music purchased directly from MSN Music prior to November 14, 2006. As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers. License keys already obtained as of August 31, 2008 will continue to allow you to listen to songs on all the computers that you previously authorized for service.

We wanted to send out this notification well in advance to remind you to backup your music and to provide you sufficient time to confirm license keys for the songs you've purchased from MSN Music.

This is also a good time to remind you that you can back up and secure your music by burning your purchased songs and playlists to CD. With Windows Media Player, you can burn your own Audio CDs from the music stored in your library. Complete instructions for this can be found at MSN Music online help.

Please take this opportunity to make sure you have the licenses you need to access your music. As a friendly reminder, please remember that the MSN Music service allows you to authorize up to 5 computers for songs purchased from MSN Music. You must have licenses for the songs on each authorized computer, in order to be able to play the songs successfully. If you have already played a given song on a computer, then you have successfully obtained the license key for that song. MSN Music keys do not expire. If you intend to transfer a previously downloaded song to a new computer (or an existing computer with a new operating system, such as an upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista) within the maximum allowed limit of 5 computers, please do so before August 31, 2008. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.

The good thing is you can still burn to CD and get a DRM-free version. The bad thing is a) you lose some quality in the process - and why should you have to do this?

Microsoft could argue that technically, the license key you in the end means they haven't totally hosed users. And while that's true, it's only true for as long as you keep the PC you currently have. Not that I go through that quickly, but a few years is as long as I generally keep one.

Of course, perhaps by then your music taste will have changed, so you won't even want that old track, right?

Source: By Tech Ex