Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.
MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. "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," reads the e-mail seen by Ars. "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."
View: Full Story at Ars Technica
MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. "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," reads the e-mail seen by Ars. "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."
View: Full Story at Ars Technica
Guess now we know. You're screwed.
Guess now we know. You're screwed.
Yup same here, I dared to ask the question about iTunes but was hammered...
How could Apple stop supporting iTunes? Well just about the same way as MS stops supporting MSN Music now.
Time to wake up fellas, this is the very reason why I don't purchase music on-line.
Guess now we know. You're screwed.
Not completely: you take your songs and burn them to a CD (a rewritable one will save you some money). You then rip them back into .MP3s or .WMAs or whatever. Your songs are now DRM free and you can delete the original DRM-infested files.
I believe this works with pretty much any DRM files.
You don't care about quality, do you?
Not very great for those that just bought the music, knowing nothing about the DRM that controlled them, though. Way to **** on people, Microsoft.
In the case of Adobe they've actually got an statement/promise to the public that if they were to stop supporting activation that they would provide an update so that you wouldn't need to activate it. Sure, it isn't legally binding but it would be a PR nightmare fro hell if they screw end users over.
Its funny with activation, it was tried with node locking on the UNIX machines such as SGI, SUN, HP and IBM - and it never work. I find it funny that they're trying it again after the UNIX old school gave up on it years ago.
When i pay and dl an item with drm i remove drm immediately.
So it really amazes me if there's many out there that are really taken by this altowell foreseeable event.
When i pay and dl an item with drm i remove drm immediately.
So it really amazes me if there's many out there that are really taken by this altowell foreseeable event.
I doubt the average user even knows what DRM is let alone a drm remover.
Yeah, but how many home users know how to do that?
Thankfully, people like Valve have got this in mind. They said should they ever stop supporting steam, all games that have use steam will no longer require activation or communication with their servers...
Thankfully, people like Valve have got this in mind. They said should they ever stop supporting steam, all games that have use steam will no longer require activation or communication with their servers...
No they don't.
Thankfully, people like Valve have got this in mind. They said should they ever stop supporting steam, all games that have use steam will no longer require activation or communication with their servers...
No they don't.
But they may in the event they close up shop.
The original article from MSN Music is no longer available...
I think he meant the zune software
Have you ever considered actually learning how to spell and put together coherent sentence?
This does not affect anyone badly.
I bet a lot of people are mad as well about losing money to Microsoft for something they bought.
I think most people who know enuf to dl songs and have the equipment to play them also know how to crack/de-drm/torrent and all. Hell, my father (77) knows about how to, my son knew when he was about 15.
Can you not license your tracks to a computer, burn it onto disk and re-rip without drm?
And that's been the whole DRM con from the start: you're actually buying a licence to play the music rather than a copy of the music itself.
This is why I won't buy music online. The system just doesn't work long term.
Seriously, I would looooove to see Ralph (or the DoJ, or any consumer champion with a lawyer or two) go after Microsoft for this. Somebody ought to be out there fighting for the rights of MSN Music's put-upon users. Y'know, both of them...
At the very least, I hope it gets enough media coverage to reach the ears of anyone considering buying anything from the Zune store.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.