I’m psyched up. I solved my DRM License problem with MusicMatch tracks. I didn’t solve the overall “activation” problem with them, but I did solve my ability to play the three tracks I bought from them.
Through the WMP store option they allow 5 PC to be activated. If you deactivate a computer you can never play a file from Musicmatch on that computer again.
I had two computer activated. Through sheer coincidence both computers went kablpunk in the same month.
One, the laptop, totally just not useable ever again. No pre-knowledge of hardware failure, since it was “a freak four-year-old-boy juice experiement” that caused the failure of the computer. So as an activated musicmatch computer, it’s history, I can’t use it, nor deactivate it.
Two, the desktop, the previous motherboard and harddrive worked one day, then the next day they wouldn’t work. So I did stuff and couldn’t get the computer to come on. We could upgrade pieces, so we did upgrade the Power Supply, Motherboard, and Processor. I had no choice but to do that. I was unable, therefore, to “deactivate” the previous setup before it refused to work. I had no way of knowing it wouldn’t work when I left it that one evening. DH turned it off, and in the morning it wouldn’t post. History that setup was then, and I had my second “activated PC” with musicmatch go “unavailable” to me in a short time space.
That computer then, upgraded, wouldn’t play my tracks from musicmatch, it “couldn’t get the license” for either of the three files.
Musicmatch never helped me. I’m still waiting for a reply from my initial reply to their first answer to my problem. Their first answer was no help, just Q’s … urg. So now I sent them another help, asking them to just delete my other two activations, I can’t do that, and that I helped myself with the rest of the problem:
Go here, read this page at MS about “licenses for your media files are corrupted …:
support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810422&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH
It’s DRM related. Basically, if you only have musicmatch tracks with licenses, forget about the article, just do what I did, find your DRM folder, which for Win XP is in “All Users” and is a protected file, so you have to allow yourself access to it via Tools, File Options …, View and go down to Hidden Files and Folder and choose the radio button for “Show Hidden Files and Folders” and then go down further and uncheck “Hide Protected System Operating Files”. Click “Apply” and “OK” then the DRM folder should be viewable.
Right-click on it and name it DRMbackup.
Then go here:
drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/en/indivit.asp
You HAVE to go there in Internet Explorer. So if you have Firefox or something, you might have the View in IE right-click context extention, that’s useful here. If you don’t have it, make a note to get it installed later for other usefulnesses. This time then just copy the URL and paste it into IE and go there. The button to “upgrade” will be active, just click it and wait for it to be done.
Then open WMP and click to play one of those dumb musicmatch tracks.
It’ll aquire the license, might want you to input your password for musicmatch, maybe your user name too (which is your registered email address with them.)
You have to OK a screen to activate your PC, it tells you how many are already activated.
Immediately the license is updated and you are good to go. All other tracks update their licenses when you click to play them immediately. (All this contingent with being online, DSL connection preferred.)
Maybe the shortcut for this is to just go to the second URL in IE and do that part only, maybe you don’t have to read and do the previous linked page. I read through it and I did it “just because you never know”. No situation existed for me to ‘backup’ licenses, or reinstate them. So it was only a shortcut through it to the DRM folder to rename it and get it out of the way.
This help was buried in the microsoft site. It wasn’t easy to find. I will say that windows media player threw an error when it couldn’t download the license, and the web page for more info had no clue what that error meant, of course. I wish so much that they could link to REAL HELP like the actual files I turned up finally, as suggestions, or at least a menu to search through that I would have found them in.
It’s precisely annoying of them to have so much info to sort through, and to have to go and find stuff on their site, or in the support feature search on Win XP. Real-time help for issues without having to “call” someone, would be nice. Automatic connection if you ask for help with an error, to the right links that you can use to resarch help you actually need. Pie in the sky stuff, it is.
Anyhow, my three little tracks are back, I can play them now. I only want to get them to release the other 2 activated PC’s from my account, I can’t do that, and I’m not so sure they will do that. I know they can. Of course they can. It’s just WILL they.
I also found this article Copyright Crackdown, posted on Aug. 1, 2005, about licensing and protections on products that are coming out from Sony BMG and others. It’s an article worth reading for anyone who buys music online as DRM tracks, or transfers music to devices, copies CD’s, even just plays CD’s in their own computer. It’s an article side-related to my own post here.
