Microsoft to Launch Online Music Store 416
yonnage writes "Microsoft is expected to enter the online song store market this week, which should put the software giant head-to-head with Apple Computer in the music business at last.
The launch of Microsoft's iTunes rival will be timed along with the beta release of Microsoft's new Windows Media Player 10, expected on Thursday, sources say. The store will also be in beta mode, lacking some of the features that will be added later, sources said."
Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
It could be the Windows domination all over agian (Score:2, Interesting)
But it doesn't sync with my iPod (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't even up(down)graded to WMP 9 yet, it's so sticky with DRM issues.
Security AND music all for $150. (Score:1, Interesting)
Thankfully, iTunes doesn't make me pay for a $150 OS upgrade. In fact, all I need to buy is the damn best portable MP3 player, the iPod. And in fact I don't even have to buy an iPod... I can just burn my purchased music to CD... no other purchases required.
Then again, maybe an upgrade will help in terms of computer security... and maybe I should pay the $150 to address the security bugs in older versions of Windows...
I was thinking that they....... (Score:5, Interesting)
A second leg of that campaign is bearing fruit this year, as a wave of Windows-based entertainment hardware comes to market. Some of these will be portable devices, dubbed Portable Media Centers, running a slimmed-down version of Windows that includes Microsoft's new Janus copy-protection tools. This technology is expected to give a boost to subscription services by allowing the music to be put on portable devices for the first time.
emphasis mine
Why on earth would you need a Windows GUI on a device the with the same comparible size and power of an Ipod?
I wonder if in the future they'll bundle Media player 10 and the MS music store with Longhorn.
Screw MS (Score:5, Interesting)
I know i know, yes they have to ruin the world.. but i can still be annoyed at it..
grr. note to self: need to take action.. stop evil empire..
Re:I was thinking that they....... (Score:5, Interesting)
Partner Driven (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheers,
Erick
Re:timing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, they failed to compete even with the meager feature set offered by IE, pumped their money into one of a million useless portals, and they fell apart.
Is this Microsoft's fault, for exploiting their monopoly to crush Netscape? Maybe. But the prevalence of IE hasn't crushed Opera. It hasn't killed off the much smaller OmniWeb either. In fact, Netscape's sorta-funded Mozilla arm is doing fantastic against IE, almost everybody who tries Firefox sticks with it.
Moral of the story: if you're gonna survive competetion from Microsoft, you'd better get on your fucking toes. Make sure you're always one step ahead (not hard, Microsoft maneuvers with the speed and grace of a Cadillac Brougham) and don't ride your success.
I don't think we have anything to worry about from Apple in these respects. Unfortunately, the key to doing more than simply surviving Microsoft is keen marketing in the face of price cutting and a good-enough mentality. Microsoft is, after all, the Walmart of software companies when it comes to price cutting. If they can shave $.11 off the cost and sell at a loss for two years, they have a chance of burying Apple and everybody else.
Re:Microsoft has to own everything (Score:2, Interesting)
Get your facts right.
IBM, Dell, GE, Walmart etc. there are about 120 other companies which have more money than Microsoft.
iTunes will win out (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Think Not (Score:3, Interesting)
I totally agree with you on your point (IE absolutely stomped Netscape's butt back in the day - now look at what a pile it has become compared to recent Netscape/Mozilla versions), but that was a simple software-on-software comparison. This is a little more complex because it involves cash transactions and hardware - not just a software technology competition.
More low quality? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think its terrible that this will be another lower-than-CD-quality-for-more-$$$-than-a-CD online shop. Distribution costs? Negligable compared to distribution of 5" circles of plastic. Profit? Yes please
They (*AA et al.) bitch about P2P killing their business. Since joining a closed p2p network, I have bought more CDs in the last 6 months than I have in about the last 5 years. http://www.ubernet.org/ [ubernet.org] Music ripped with Exact audio copy and encoded with LAME using the --alt-preset's. Also some OGG and FLAC.
allofmp3.com (Score:1, Interesting)
After using allofmp3.com [allofmp3.com] I would never use anything else.
Pay per MB.
No DRM
Very large (but admitidly incomplete) collection.
Songs encoded as you order them. Choose from MP3, OGG, AAC, FLAC, and more.
I spent more in 2 hours at the site than I have in my entire life previously. When you are paying $.001 a megabyte that is saying something.
Re:RIAA:Microsoft::plump:fat (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll be like a battle-royale between EULAs.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe it or not they're doing it right! (Score:5, Interesting)
A few months ago I was at a music conference when I got into a deep discussion with this guy about our love of West African music. He's been doing an African music radio show for 20 years, and has met Fela Kuti, and been in this band doing Afropop, too.
So after half an hour of talking about this, I said, "I'm sorry I don't know your name." - and I flipped around his badge. He was one of the heads of Microsoft MSN Music! I cringed a bit and said, "Oh. Uh. Microsoft? Whoa." I'm generally a MSFT-basher. But I said, "Well --- it's nice to know they have someone like you inside the big beast."
He said, "I was surprised, too, but guess what? They actually found 8 other guys like me, too. People who have been in the music side of the music biz for at least 10 years. People running folk radio shows, and jazz magazine editors and such. Real MUSIC people. And they told us to make the online music store of our dreams."
They're going to be selling the entire CD Baby Digital Distribution catalog - and in fact they pursued us pretty strongly. Even on the tech-side of things, they're really doing everything right. (Yeah yeah of course they insist on DRM. You expected Ogg Vorbis?)
But anyway I just felt you have to give credit where credit is due, and I can tell my fellow Slashdot nerds in advance that I think the MSN Music Store is really doing it right.
Re:Tin foil alert level at Orange. (Score:2, Interesting)
People will have to pay to use the MS service. The better analogy will be MSN, which, dispite great market advantage due to the desktop monopoly and advertising, only has a small part of the market. I mean even the free part, the search engine, does not have a majority of page hits, even though it is the default on IE.
The market is becoming more fragmented. People with iPods will continue to use iTunes and it will take something significant to get them to switch. Everyone else will switch music providers as is needed as there seems to be no brand loyalty other than Apple. Subscription services are the exception.
Re:Tin foil alert level at Orange. (Score:1, Interesting)
didn't the economy go thru a period where every business tried to expanded to fill every market niche, d-ver-siv-e-ca-tion, that's the word. And didn't that burst like the ".com" bubble? back-to-core-business model, con-trac-sion.
Go get'm Billy, show us how it is done again.
Re:Believe it or not they're doing it right! (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, I've had similar experiences really meeting the "nice guys" from within MS. One time I even had a 20 minute discussion w/MS' CFO (John Connors) about the exorbitant prices for their development tools (Visual Studio, among others). He nodded his head in agreement, at the end of the conversation said, "You really have a good point about this -- I'm going to have my people look into this..." Later that day before he left the conference, he got up to announce his departure and said, "Some of you asked me about why we charge so much for our products, and you know, MS is in the business of making money, too!". Watch out for the good guys at MS. There are some, but the culture/atmosphere is such that the place virtually reeks with hubris. (I worked there, I experienced it.)
I have virtually no belief MS is in the music industry for the benefit of the customers, but instead is angling to try and insert themselves into the marketplace and if they can, get their piece of the pie. Even better, if they can do it without getting themselves in court, they'd be happy to "Netscape" Apple and iTunes.
Next wave of security holes (Score:1, Interesting)
I can respect a company that takes an existing idea and improves it. MS is a company that takes an idea and cheapens it. I hope MS Music Store is successful and then the 95% of brainless users start crying about how their machine was attacked, deleted, invaded, blah blah blah!