Digital Home Thoughts: Subscription Music Woes: The PlaysForSure Achilles Heel

"Two days ago, after dumping a bunch of new tunes from Yahoo Music Unlimited onto my iRiver H10 via Windows Media Player, I took the dogs for their early-evening walks. Chris Thile's latest masterpiece played fine but, when I subsequently tried to listen to Tenacious D's sophomore (and admittedly sophomoric) album, the H10 locked up. I yanked the battery, power-cycling the unit, and tried again. This time, after an interminable delay, the H10 began playing....track 10 in the sequence. Swearing under my breath, I re-loaded the album, and then it mysteriously played through from the beginning as I'd originally intended and requested. Once it finished, I launched Tenacious D's premiere album, and it also began playing in the correct sequence. Cool...or so I thought. Yesterday evening I returned to the H10, again with dog leashes in hand. This time, the H10 absolutely refused to play Tenacious D track 1 (which it was playing with no complaint only 24 hours earlier), no matter how many times I reset it."

I've said this before: subscription music services are great, but only if they don't bug the hell out of you with stupid DRM errors and glitches that make you wonder what you're paying a monthly fee for. I had high hopes that the Zune Pass experience would smooth like butter, but it too has had its glitches. Why can't anyone get this right? And don't say Apple does, because they don't have subscription music plans - individual tracks are trouble-free in the PlayForSure world (in my experience at least).