Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

It’s the kind of issue that never existed in brick-and-mortars. When a physical store discontinues a physical product, gremlins don’t typically sneak into customers’ homes and take back the paid-for products. And yet, in effect, that’s what Yahoo inadvertently did when it shut down its music download service.

Yahoo announced a few months ago that it was shutting down its online music store, which includes killing the “servers used to validate that the music customers play is not violating copyright laws,” said a report in Forbes. Although Yahoo said that “music purchased on its music service will still work, users may not be able to move files to ‘new computers or devices.’ As a result, Yahoo is encouraging customers to burn CDs to back up the music they purchased.” Last week, Yahoo decided to offer customers coupons to pay for consumers to “replace their music collections on Rhapsody’s music store or give them a refund. Customers will have until the end of the year to take Yahoo up on its offer.”