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Microsoft Also Wants Universal Music?
rampant mac writes "An article over at the New York Post is reporting Microsoft has expressed interest in buying Vivendi's Universal Music Group, setting up a possible bidding war between the software maker and rival Apple Computer, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Microsoft's interest is said to be at the level of "poking around, kicking the tires," but it has indeed had conversations with Vivendi executives about buying the music division, sources said."
Here is a story from a few days ago about Apple and Universal.
Usually it takes M$ a few years to copy what Apple has done. So much for my pipe dream of Apple owning a record company and making it respectable...
It seems like everyone wants to buy Universal.
This could really give MS quite a bit of leverage if it ever needed it - "Upgrade now, get 50 free songs for Windows Media Player" or some such thing. I could possibly even be tied in to some future service like X-Box live.
It's obvious and clever at the same time.
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
It's called driving up the price for your competitor.
It would be my guess that both Apple and Microsoft would want to do the same thing - use music to promote and sell their products. However, if Microsoft bought Vivendi Music, would that not somehow be in violation of the anti-trust rulings? Couldn't Microsoft use their monopoly on desktop OS's to create a monopoly in legal music downloading?
I might be completely wrong, but somehow the prospect of Microsoft owning such a big label seems much scarier than Apple doing the same thing.
It doesn't surprise me at all that they want to head Apple off at the pass.
Look, Microsoft seems to think that ANY device with any computational capabilities at all for the mass market is *theirs*.
Is it any surpise that they'd want to get into this too? Imagine if that happened? You thought the RIAA was bad....hoo boy, you ain't seen nothing yet.
is there anything microsoft isn't in? they are beginning to reach pokemon status in saturation, all they need to do now is have pasta noodles shaped like the m$ symbol.
"For some in the beleaguered music industry - which has seen compact disc sales plummet in recent years due to rampant piracy"
Couldn't also be the fact that CDs are still damn
expensive and the recent mainstream music scene has
sucked, could it? Nah, let's blame the pirates!
Still in all, how interested would MS have been if
L'il Stevie hadn't made public his intent to hook up
with a Universal?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
If they actually buy the company, I'm interested in seeing what stance they will take in the fight against p2p networks and media company's current fight against free sharing of media, knowing M$ can be very rough in the courts.
rampant mac writes "An article over at the New York Post
Silly mac user, use a more reputable news source like the National Enquirer.
Obviously, MS isn't really interrested in buying Universal, but its good buisness to make sure that your competitors have a hard time pulling their deals.
MS makes a bid, forces apple to hike up their bid. In the end, MS doesn't buy anything and apple had to spend way more to get what they wanted, wich hurts them and therefore indirectly helps MS.
Is tricky, its devious, its evil...its Microsoft at its best.
You can't take the sky from me...
Look at UM's webpage, there's a (huge) list : Universal Music Group Artists.
I was worried about this when I saw the /. story a couple days ago but didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to give M$ any ideas myself. But I guess they read the /. story too and got the idea anyways. If only Pudge hadn't posted the story M$ would never have found out and Apple would have gotten away with it.
/. in capitals)
DAMM YOU ?> !!!!
(?> ==
I stole this Sig
according to their website they're the biggest selling record label with Ashanti, Erykah Badu, Mary J. Blige, Andrea Bocelli, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Eminem, Johnny Hallyday , Enrique Iglesias, Jay-Z, Elton John, Ronan Keating, Diana Krall, Limp Bizkit, Nelly, No Doubt, Florent Pagny, Luciano Pavarotti, Sandy & Junior, Shaggy, Sting, Texas, Shania Twain, U2 and Russell Watson. they also own pressplay
A kick-ass soundtrack for Doom 3
this means that we'll keep on getting music for free ! I can not see MS create a safe, closed system being hacked in less than a month.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
If you thought the RIAA was bad, wait until we're up against someone who has half a clue about technology!
In fact, I hope they buy movie companies, publishers, etc. Sony has done the same thing and I see Microsoft and Sony as being the two competitors that need to be balanced.
Sony doesn't get a lot of flack in these parts because they haven't made the political mistakes Microsoft has, but they're just as much a threat with their stranglehold on manufacturing and content.
I would love to see Microsoft start spending their money in these areas.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
... there will be an announcement about gnu.org, the FSF, a few of the Debian developers, and Linus himself all going in together to buy this music company.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The only reason MS is doing this is too raise the price of the music company.
Apple does not have the cash that MS has, and MS has tons of cash. MS can raise the price 30% and not blink, Apple would be hit hard.
Linux O Muerte!
I'm sure we can expect the following exciting new releases if Microsoft makes this purchase. Not being much of a shining wit, I will leave the hard part up to you:
<pun involving "windows"> - some artist
<clever parody of blue-screen-of-death> - a band
<clumsy attempt at humurous title> - <artist with "gates" as surname>
<mildly amusing dig at open source> - obscure indie band
Oh the fun you could have. If you had time.
http://www.macwhispers.com - is never wrong, check them out.
This whole thing feels like M$ only did the same thing looking to check out what they could do
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
...start rumors of their interest in buying out insanely large and bloated corporations, then sit back and laugh while the mindless paranoids at Microsoft fall over themselves to beat Apple to the punch, depleting their coffers.
Falling Out The Windows, Landing In The .NET - The Allchin Brothers (country, classic rock)
My Baby's Givin' Me The Blues - Bluescreen Traveler (blues, contemporary)
Heaven's Openin' Up For Me - Bill 'Pearly' Gates (gospel, contemporary)
Free is Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose (Linux sucks) - Janis Joplin (remixes, classic rock)
Kids these days. Don't even bother doing their own work.
This strikes me being one of those consolidations like what was going on during the Dot-Com bubble. To give but one example, Time Warner snarfing up AOL basically weakened both companies. I suppose if there was a company I would like to see get weakened, it would be Microsoft. However, even if the Uni deal went totally sour Microsoft would survive. Apple could go right down the tubes if this happened.
When I first heard about this, I thought that Apple was angling to buy Universal PICTURES on Pixar's behalf. That would make total sense, considering that Disney has not been an especially fair partner in their deal with Pixar, and Pixar has been one of the few bright spots on Disney's otherwise lackluster balance sheet. Even a threat of Jobs leveraging Apple to give Pixar its own friendly distribution path would be enough to scare Michael Eisner into giving Jobs whatever he wanted.
In any event, this deal makes zero business sense, and seems to be turning into a pissing match between Ballmer and Jobs. Jobs should know better...Ballmer is the one who drinks the most beer. He'll win. ~_^ (grinning, ducking and running)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Dude, they've got Lionel Richie. No wonder Apple and Microsoft are in a bidding war!
And we all know who'd win a bidding war.
...just maybe.
/. still hold a grudge against Apple based upon the Macs of the mid-90's, OS X is a Unice, Apple has embraced and aided OSS and Apple is a great commercial alternative to wintel.
If M$ got their hands on Universal, we could all pretty much kiss free use good-bye.
And I don't even think it would be a true bidding war, I think a lot of it would be "buddy buddy" talks within the RIAA as a peer consesus that M$ is good and Apple bad. Since I'm sure the RIAA and Universals shareholders would ardently support a greater partnership with a corporation that specializes in proprietary formats and who is heading up a coup d'etat on the users rights to own their machine.
In a twisted sense, such an organization that controlled a major media producer as well as the mechanism for media playback and the operating system for that mechanism to be run on is an easy target for an anti-trust. But, we've already seen how effective the US Federal Judges are at punishing M$...
But maybe, just maybe it will all finally hit close enough to home when a Fed. Judge buys a CD and find they can't play it without having a winCE device with windows media player installed that we might finally see some justice in action.
Man, I hope this post isn't FUD, but I am feeling fearful of the possible repercussions I as a consumer would experience if the articles speculation were to come true.
So, hey, everyone go help Apple, buy some stock and pump them up! Apple has done more than just say "Rip-Mix-Burn". They have built some great software to make professional quality media production easy and affordable and they are staunchly against DRM on their platform. Though I know many on
Personally, I think OS X has a better a chance of replacing Moms desktop that Linux does. And as it should. Let's see Linux replace Windows in the server market and OS X replace windows in the desktop market.
GNU/Music? Ya know, free as in song..
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
With a power house like Universal, Window's media and it's copy protection is dead.
Go Apple! Free music for everyone!
Correction...Apple now the backing of all 5 music labels for their online music service... http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/04/12/business/med ia/12MUSI.html?th
Its full steam ahead for apple!
http://chrono.posterous.com/
"Hey look, someone's trying to make money again."
"Do they use, sell or manufacture computers?"
"Yep."
"Stop them. I don't care what it costs."
On the day that Slashdot ran the story about Apple buying Universal Music, there were also stories about Microsoft authorizing a port of Windows Media technology for embedded Linux [slashdot.org] and high-definition DVD [slashdot.org] at standard DVD bitrates using Microsoft-proprietary technology.
It's all part of the same story. The world is moving toward all-digital media formats. Microsoft wants all those formats to be Microsoft-owned. They sign up media producers with promises of copy control, pay-per-view and other DRM features. Already, some CDs have been released crippled for use on non-Windows computers (and some CD players).
I'm guessing someone at Apple sees a possible future in which new music won't play on any computer not running Windows. If all the major music companies sign on to lock down their content with MS technology, consumers may believe they have no choice but to stay "inside the lines." If Universal Music doesn't sign on to locked-down content, consumers probably won't tolerate severe restrictions from other content providers.
Microsoft makes some good stuff. But I'm hoping that we don't wind up in an all-Microsoft world.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Apple: (Stands of side of bridge, pretends to jump)
Microsoft: AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine