14 DAY TRIAL // If they are not careful, Yahoo! Music users can lose all their downloaded songs. The Yahoo! Music Store announced today that after September 30, the service would no longer be available, so people are advised to backup their music belongings, by saving them on CDs. This because, after the specified date, without the necessary registration key, which will die with Yahoo!'s application, no action ca be performed within the account anymore.
And that is not all. Those who don't use an alternate support for the songs they acquired while logged on to Yahoo! Music can lose all their data if they perform any changes to the operating system. Moreover, "Yahoo! will no longer be able to authorize song playback on additional computers," as the company stated in a letter for all users, published on the Los Angeles Times blog. Yahoo! cannot guarantee people who used a single computer for storing music that they would be, further on, able to access songs from that PC.
"Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer's operating system", say Yahoo! officials, and the only word that probably matters to users is the insecure "generally".
To prevent general disappointment, although it needs to do more than that to bring things on the right track again, Yahoo! ends the e-mail on a cheerful note. Users are reminded that they can still buy music from Rhapsody, a Yahoo! Music partner. Furthermore, they are encouraged to profit from other content provided by Yahoo!, such as videos, online radio and news about the music industry. However, how many users will be pleased with the alternatives is a mystery. For the moment, the bad news of pulling Yahoo! Music off the market is a sore point with people who credited the project with great chances of changing the music environment for the better.