Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired found that he was no longer in need of his Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo! Music subscriptions now that the RIAA is starting to warm up to the idea of DRM-free music.

Yahoo! Music was painless to cancel, but Napster took a half hour:

Napster
What a pain. There’s no way to cancel online, so I called the cancellation number (800.839.4210) and waited on hold for about 20 minutes listening to messages like “Did you know that your Napster subscription lets you access over 5 million tracks? Please hold, and a customer service representative will be with you shortly.”

A woman came on the line and asked me a bunch of questions (Was this my first call? Could I confirm my email? Is there a phone number on which she could call me back in case something goes wrong with the call? Can I hold again?). Granted, this is two days after Christmas, but still, I wasn’t too happy at how long this was taking.

When she took me off hold again, I told her I wanted to cancel because 2007 was the year 3 of the major labels started selling music without DRM. Back on hold.

She came back — presumably after consulting a manager or the internet to find out what DRM is — and then responded, “I don’t understand, because all of our music contains DRM.” Back on hold. This time, I told her I wanted to cancel because the files were DRMed, and she finally canceled my subscription.

Total time for cancellation: 30 minutes and 32 seconds

Sounds fun. If it were us, we would have told her we were canceling because robots from Venus were attacking our apartment building, and we thought they were somehow attracted by Napster.

Why (And How) I Just Canceled All My Music Subscriptions [Wired via BoingBoing]

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