Via Arstechnica, Yahoo has closed down its music service and now the keys to the music as part of that product are lost. People cannot play the music they leased - rather than purchased I guess - from Yahoo. It is a good argument against DRM and subscribing to any DRM service or product.

I do use iTunes and occasionally buy songs from it. They are covered by DRM or digital rights management known as Fairplay. The only real way I have control over the songs is to burn them to a music CD and then re-import. A hopelessly manual and laborious process - and consequently a sufficient deterrent against me doing it.

The iTunes DRM has some really weird restrictions on it too; from the wiki article:

The track may be copied to any number of iPod portable music players.

The track may be played on up to five authorized computers simultaneously. (Apple stores this information on their servers)

A particular playlist within iTunes containing a FairPlay-encrypted track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed.

The track may be copied to a standard Audio CD any number of times.

For the most part I have few enough songs that I have bought from iTunes that it isn't a big deal if I lose them all. The music that I really like is still purchased on CD or integrated from other people's music collections.

One issue that it did raise was when I got divorced recently. Normally physical music collections are easily and quickly divided up. But with DRM music who gets to keep the authorized computers and accounts? As it turned out I got a new iTunes account because it was not my email that we used. But the songs we had purchased stayed authorized on my ex-wifes Macbook. Not mine.

Fortunately the music collection was small enough that it did not become a property issue, but I suspect if DRM hangs around and someone has a non-trivial iTunes music collection in the thousands of dollars a judge somewhere will be making a judgement on how the DRM'd files are split. It may not be to Apple's liking either.

Update: Yahoo is offering the downloaded mp3s without DRM to its customers caught out by the store closing.

We went and saw the Pixies at the Mesa Amphlitheatre. It was an interesting venue. There was no seating and there were grass covered steps that went up until there was an old SCG style hill at the top. It was a great place to see a band.

The Pixies are now in Rolling Stone territory, suitably positioned to cash in on the pre-grunge generation that has fond memories of them when they were at college and uni - and unlike those days, the pre-grunge generation now has some serious money to spend on tickets. Despite that, it was affordable, ~ $35 IIRC. I think the average age of punters reflected that. I would guess the average age of the audience was about 28-32. Not 40 like I am.

The Pixies have all the original line-up as well. I think that is important, as the Pixies without Kim Deal aren't really the same. One of the awesome things about the Pixies - unlike the Rolling Stones and some other bands - they have aged normally and aren't stuck in some Peter Pan time warp of eternal youth. They are bald, over-weight and are more natural for it.

The music was amazing. The Pixies are tight together, relaxed in their music and have a back catalog of music that incredibly listenable. The crowd didn't even mind when they played Wave of Mutilation twice in two different ways. They also have a bunch of better known songs like Here comes your man, and Debaser.

+1 would go again. Fantastic band playing great music.

The crowd at the Pixies concert.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is making a comeback in the American pubs. Lately we have been blowing off steam on Thursday nights at a local dive bar that has $1.50 PBR nights.