Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) on why renting music is the new 8-track

The Mossberg Report -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal.:

"The biggest problem with renting is that if you stop paying your subscription, even for one month, all the songs you've ever downloaded--going back years--will become inert and unplayable. Rental song files are rigged with computer code that requires a monthly digital confirmation the renter is continuing to pay. Without that, the song files die.

An iTunes user could pay $500 to acquire 500 individual songs (buying whole albums is somewhat cheaper) over two years, and those songs are always hers and will always play. By contrast, a Yahoo user might download 500 rental songs over two years for just $120 in subscription fees, but the songs will become unplayable unless she pays hundreds or thousands more in subscription fees over many years, even if the fees rise."

The only way around this would be something like hymn, which decrypts iTunes music files.