Yahoo is now alerting customers via email that support for Yahoo Music store will cease after September 30th of this year. Due to Yahoo's partnership agreement with Rhapsody, Yahoo Music users will be able to transfer their subscription libraries over to the Rhapsody service.

The pass through over to Rhapsody is fine and dandy for those who are utilizing the subscription service, but not so great for customers who have actually purchased music. Yahoo says that it will no longer release keys to unlock DRM on its music after the cutoff date, meaning that purchased songs will be stuck on the original computer that downloaded them. Users won't be able to transfer their DRM infected music to a digital audio player or to another PC.

The now defunct MSN Music store's customers found themselves in a similar bind recently when Microsoft announced that their DRM authorization servers would be shut down permanently on August 31st, 2008. After a hoard of bad publicity, Microsoft eventually agreed to keep their authorization servers online until 2011.

This fiasco is yet another example of the numerous problems that DRM causes for legitimate consumers. Unfortunately for them, the people who purchased Yahoo Music downloads and have not yet unlocked them will be very unhappy come this October.