My Dear John Letter from MSN Music
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News Commentary. Microsoft wants me to know exactly what I should do with all that rights-protected music. |
I got an e-mail today explaining that Microsoft would no longer take responsibility for managing the rights of songs purchased from MSN Music. Well, that's, ah, quite the ringing endorsement for DRM, isn't it? Here's the letter and my snarky translation of the meaning:
"MSN Music is constantly striving to provide you, our user, with the most compelling music experience that we can. We want to tell you about an upcoming change to our support service to ensure you have a seamless experience with the music you've downloaded from MSN Music."
Translation: We've got bad news that's really going to piss you off, and we need to soften you up first.
"As you may recall from a November 14, 2006 mail, we entered into a new partnership for music downloads. The Zune Marketplace can be accessed directly from any MSN Music artist page and offers users thousands of tracks for users to download individually or with a season pass subscription. You can still come to MSN Music to find all the latest news and previews of your favorite artists and songs, but in order to buy music, we'll take you to our partners at the Zune Marketplace."
Translation: Apple whooped our asses good in online music, so we screwed ourselves and our partners by abandoning PlaysForSure; we launched a new service with DRM that's incompatible with our previous rights-management technologies.
"With the launch of our partnership with Zune Marketplace, we closed the MSN Music store and stopped selling music directly from MSN Music. However, we have continued to offer assistance and support for existing songs that you've purchased from MSN Music, including help to transfer songs that you've purchased to additional computers and MSN Music compatible devices."
Translation: Our wacky rights-management technology requires your music to dial home to make sure you're not the file-swapping pirate we think you are. We couldn't pull the plug right away, but we wanted to.
"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."
Translation: Surely, you've stolen new, higher-bit rate versions of the music by now. We need to reallocate those rights-management servers to our services platform. Don't you know that Live Mesh is coming?
"We wanted to send out this notification well in advance to remind you to back up your music and to provide you sufficient time to confirm license keys for the songs you've purchased from MSN Music."
Translation: We know you're pissed, but we didn't believe in the service. Why were you so gullible?
"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."
Translation: Burn audio CDs, with even crappier audio fidelity but no rights that we have to manage. Yes, we promised to take care of you when we launched the Zune Marketplace. But we lied. Deal with it.
"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."
Translation: The keys may not expire, but they may need to be refreshed in some circumstances. Get used to your content being where it is.
"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."
Translation: Suckers, soon you won't be able to reauthorize computers. You'd best buy those new Vista PCs before summer ends. Oh, and don't forget that you have to play every song on every computer, or the rights go poof. We already said "suckers," right?
Comments (17)
Less than 1% of my music was bought online. Way less, in fact. The rest, I ripped from CD's that I already owned. Anyone want to hazard a guess why I do it that way?
Posted by ErnieTheBear | April 22, 2008 8:00 PM
Same here Ernie, all my music are ripped from CD's I purchased during the 90's from lunch money I saved up. I personally don't have much confidence in Microsoft's music platform/vision. It seems so much like a moving target trying to catch up with Apple which I believe are the real pioneers and truly believe in you enjoying your music and making it visually pleasing. Thats why I am saving up bit by bit for an iPod Touch. Cover Flow looks awesome.
Do love the improvements made to Media Player 11 Album library though, but its just the part when it comes to devices and ensuring the music is with you forever.
Posted by Andre Da Costa | April 22, 2008 8:29 PM
I know how you fell. I'm a long time user of Wal-Mart music downloads and recently they went from protected WMA file format to unprotected MP3 format and they will soon be ending support for the WMA files and that really mad me mad. It's such a pain to try and burn them all to CD's to back up the files seeing as I have hundreds...
Posted by Lawton | April 22, 2008 9:43 PM
For a company sitting on as much cash as MSFT, the right thing to do would be to offer a full refund to all the orphaned MSN music store customers. But that requires a CEO with a sense of equity and honesty.
But if he did that, he might have to fess up to all the employees who bought his snake-oil spiel and now have stock options in Davy Jone's locker. Screwed customers, screwed employees, that Ballmer guy is an all around genius!
Posted by Tracey | April 22, 2008 10:33 PM
A link that explains it all
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/04/22/2130225.shtml
MSN Music DRM Servers Going Dark In September
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Just another reason not to trust the Borg.
Posted by chips | April 23, 2008 12:53 AM
Obviously the biggest download from MSM music from now on will be "Theme from Shaft"
Posted by mgo | April 23, 2008 8:29 AM
Joe;
This is just one of the reasons that I don't buy any hideous online music. Here is my reasons outlined below:
1.) The Bitrate sucks -- Come on, 128, 256, and 320 is terrible.
2.) DRM -- Who needs that crap
3.) Cost? They should pay me to listen to the terrible bitrated music, not the other way around.
I purchase the CD music, rip it to FLAC Lossless that has no DRM and then transcode to Apple Lossless for my iPod. I have a couple of terrabytes of my music library ripped to two 500 gig external and networked drives so that everyone at my home can listen to music whenever, on whatever, without anyone dictating to me anym of the DRM crap.
Posted by Douglas S. Taylor | April 23, 2008 9:10 AM
This is just the beginning of what is store if MicroSoft's vision of "End to End Trusted Computing" ever becomes reality. Read V.P. Charney's whitepaper.
Posted by Pinball | April 23, 2008 9:40 AM
Does anyone find it ironic that now MICROSOFT posts complete instructions on how to remove DRM from any file. HA HA HA!!!
Couldn't those who wanted the DRM there in the first place........ now SUE microsft!?
Go for it Universal!
this is how music companies earn money nowadays.
Who needs an artist roster when you have lawyers and suits!
Posted by dcsos | April 23, 2008 10:09 AM
I am a huge music collector and have approximately 1,000 CD's. All are ripped to my computer in mp3 format. I can, and did, put them on my nano, my Zen and my Sansa players. No problems whatsoever and fantastic sound quality. I never buy a CD worth of songs online. I do however admit that I now purchase INDIVIDUAL songs online from Wal-Mart and Amazon in unprotected mp3 format. So this never has been and never will be an issue for me. By-the-way, I always ALWAYS backup the songs I purchase to CD. I have a hard time believing anybody bought songs through Microsoft (MSN). You should have known that was a mistake, so you deserve the hassle you are going through.
Posted by Bob Maine | April 23, 2008 12:36 PM
I think the people who should be *really* upset is the music industry\RIAA. Microsoft is fairly safe -- who's spent enough money on MSN music that would warrant a lawsuit. I bought a couple songs on MSN just because I wanted to see what all the hype was about this DRM thing, and they were cheap. Okay, so I'm out $2 on songs I never listen to. But, how many people are going to be turned off by this, whether they bought anything from MSN Music or not, and how many will return to 'free' music via P2P so they don't get the shaft themselves at some point? And nobody is to blame but the enternainment industry themselves -- they're the ones who insisted on this troublesome DRM.
Posted by Patrick | April 23, 2008 3:46 PM
So you've paid Microsoft for a service, and now they've politely decided to keep your money and stop providing that service.
Question: Is turnabout fair play?
Suppose you pay a subscription fee for an online Microsoft product, and you find a hack to avoid paying for it. Can you simply send them a polite letter saying, "Thanks, but I've decide to stop paying while continueing to use your service"?
This wouldn't be theft any more - or any less - than Microsoft's actions.
Posted by Roger Strong | April 23, 2008 5:00 PM
Patrick, very fine point
Why get DRM music when you can go mp3?
I long ago used the Protected Music Converter
to convert all WMA DRM files to MP3 because I had some sense something like this would happen.
Sure it cost me to use the program but it was well worth it.
Yet I'm Supposed to waste CDs just to rip them back off?
What a way to reward people for not being thieves!
Microsoft needs to offer a FREE protected music converter and then it wouldn't be a big deal, but alas microshafts motto is screw the little guy he can't fight back.
Consequently its the same reason I have a legal lic. of windows and yet I have a cd somewhere with programs to bypass it. I don't trust companies that want me to call home to use their programs.
What happens if they go out of business or worse yet decide its time for you to move on to something more expensive when you don't want to. (hmmmm? vista?)
I suppose you could go on limewire or some other file sharing program and download all those songs in mp3 format because you already paid to have a right to listen to those songs RIGHT?
I'm sure they wouldn't agree with that though huh?
Protected Music Converter (US $25)
http://www.wma-mp3.com/
Posted by XPUSER | April 24, 2008 9:27 AM
Editor, I'm not sure if I would actually admit to owning a Zune let alone admitting to purchasing music at MSN Music. Hehe, sucker!
Posted by kibbled_bits | April 28, 2008 1:41 PM
Another "happy" costumer here that got some music from the msn music store along the years. But I saw this comming when they decided to close the music store so I converted all that music into unprotected one with Tunebite. I mean c'mon why risk losing my music, that I obviously paid for.And anyways drm=huge pain in the back, I was never able to use it on whatever device I wanted because of that copy protection or whatever.It would have been nice to offer some sort of copy of that music without the drm but they didn't so hello tunebite,bye bye drm.
Posted by scout_v | May 6, 2008 5:18 AM
I'm surprised nobody has suggested the clear best solution ... MSFT could just provide downloadable software to strip out the DRM! :-) Magic, no servers needed!
DRM has never done more than make life difficult for paying customers.
Posted by Pilgrim | May 15, 2008 7:25 AM
I bought at least 15 songs from MSN but already have them on a CD so not to conerned but that was very sneaky of them I must say*
Posted by JoJo | June 30, 2008 6:05 PM