Mark Cuban, after predicting the extinction of the CD and the end of the desktop computer era, now says it's the end of the road for the RIAA.
[T]he introduction of Yahoo’s Music Unlimited Service sets the new market value for all the music you can download in a month…5 bucks.
The RIAA can no longer claim that students who are downloading music are costing them thousands of dollars each. They can’t claim much of anything actually. In essence, Yahoo just turned possession of a controlled music substance into a misdemeanor. Payable by a $5 per month fine.
I truly believe that music that "feels free" is the future and will render the RIAA obsolete, but we're not quite there yet.
After upgrading my Dell Pocket DJ with the latest firmware, I decided to give Y! Music Unlimited a spin. All in all, a very positive experience - at least initially. I had a few complaints about the interface, but those are forgivable considering Y!MU is still in early beta. Less than a week later, though, I've canceled my subscription.
The problem? The DRM still doesn't work. As I mentioned, I had no problems initially. Soon, though, transfers became very slow, and now they take several minutes and ultimately fail. (One of my complaints with the interface, by the way, is that the only indication of anything transfer-wise is what you get in the status bar. No queue like the Download Manager, etc).
Yahoo! certainly piqued a lot of interest mainly for its price. Music can't "feel free", at any price, unless it flows freely. We sure wouldn't buy a CD that we couldn't play on more than one or two CD players; why should we have to accept these limitations on our digital music?