Folks who bought DRM-protected music through Microsoft’s folded MSN Music online music store got a rude shock last April when Microsoft said it would stop authorizing the music as of August 31, 2008. That meant users would be able to keep listening to the purchased music on PCs that had already been authorized to play it, but users wouldn’t be able to move the tracks—which, remember, they’d bought and paid for—to any new machines after that date.
Now, Microsoft has done an about-face, saying customers who purchased music through MSN Music will be able to authorize new devices through at least 2011, at which point Microsoft will make a decision about whether ongoing usage warrants continuing to support authorizations.
MSN Music shut its doors in November 2006 when Microsoft launched its Zune player. MSN Music sold tracks compatible with Microsoft’s PlaysForSure ecosystem, which attempted to create an ecosystem of media stores and devices from multiple manufacturers to compete with Apple’s iPod. (We all know how well that turned out.) Microsoft abandoned PlaysForSure itself when it introduced the Zune, which uses an incompatible DRM system.
Microsoft’s earlier decision to stop authorizing purchases through MSN Music not only drew the ire of customers—and scads of sarcastic laughter from consumers and digital media users who have been decrying DRM for years—but also drew the attention of consumer activist organizations and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who claimed MSN Music customers ought to be entitled to refunds if they lost the ability to transfer music they’d purchased to new devices.
In the last year and a half, record labels have become increasingly willing to sell music in DRM-free formats, which essentially work on any device without authorization. The music industry as a whole, however, believes the availability of unprotected music tracks contributes to piracy, and the industry blames digital piracy—and distribution networks like peer-to-peer services—for substantial declines in its sales in recent years.
