For the many people who purchased music from the now-defunct MSN Music store, this summer would be a good time to clean out your files. You didn’t really want to keep all those songs you bought, did you?
After the launch of the company’s Zune Marketplace in late 2006, Microsoft decided to ditch the old store and as of August 31, 2008, they will be shutting off the MSN Music licence servers.
So what exactly does this mean for all those music files that were legally downloaded and paid for?
Well, if you FOREVER COMMIT to a computer by the aforementioned date, NEVER buy a new computer and NEVER upgrade your OS then you can keep all that music.
If you do decide to upgrade? Tough shit, the files wont transfer properly.
As quoted in an Ars Technica article:
“…this technicality is not rooted in reality — the authorizations will now expire when the computer does, for whatever reason.
Of course, MSN Music customers do have one other option: burning all of their music to audio CD and then re-ripping them back to the computer as MP3s, sans DRM. But that’s a lossy, lousy solution.”
