Zune, Xbox 360 & Windows Mobile Phones

Microsoft finally made a good move with the Zune and has decided to extend the DRM on PlaysForsure content until 2011 when it was set to expire on August 2008.

Microsoft caught a lot of heat for this decision and its one of the many missteps the company made in the early stages of Zune. If Microsoft wanted to jump start Zune it would have been smart to just eat the PlaysForSure licenses and have them transfer to Zune. Thats the best way for Microsoft to keep the customer but instead the focused on developing their own close ecosystem and they probably already sent most of those customers over to some other player at this point.

Why announce you’ll extend the license months before? You gotta think most PlaysForSure clients didn’t want to wait untilthe very end and most probably left Microsoft and bought an iPhone or something.

I swear the Zune team is a mole trying to undo what could have been a far better device and platform.

Microsoft extends life of MSN Music tunes – Network World

People who bought songs from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music service will get three more years to move the music to new devices and operating systems after a change of course by the company.

Microsoft said it will now support authenticating those tracks, as required by the DRM (digital rights management) technology encoded into the music, through at least the end of 2011. Microsoft will then decide based on demand whether to continue.
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Songs purchased on the service, offered only in the U.S., used Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” DRM, which required that the songs gain a license key from Microsoft’s servers if a user transferred the music to a new PC or device.

But MSN Music, one of several online music store efforts by Microsoft, was shut down in November 2006 when the company launched a new one centered around its Zune digital music player.