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Microsoft Prepares Alternative To Apple iTunes
bmarklein writes "According to CNET, Microsoft is working on a version of its DRM software that supports expiration of files on portable devices. Combined with a subscription service like Pressplay (soon to become Napster) that allows unlimited "tethered" downloads, you'll be able to fill up your high-capacity player with new music for a flat monthly fee. Of course it will expire once you stop paying the sub fee, but which do you think is the better deal: $7500 to fill a 30GB player (7500 songs at $1 each) with iTunes Music Store, or $120 a year with the ability to swap in new music whenever you want? How much is it worth to you to "own" the bits?"
Isn't the question really, "Wouldn't it be great to own every song ever created for $10?"
/. utility to bust the DRM protection. ;-) I give it about 4 days after the service starts until someone figures this out. ;-)
How is this possible?
1) Sign up for one month.
2) Download every song in the database.
3) Use the new
4) Discontinue the service.
A small point: Apple's service sells albums for $10 so 15 or 20 songs can cost $10. I have spent a total of $11 on the Apple Music Store, and I can say that the user experiance is very good, and with the "1-Click" feature I could easily spend $100 without even noticing.
Yawn.
Watch the verbage. As far as the RIAA is concerned, you never 'own' a song. Unless the consumer has the right to rip, mix, and burn, you can't say they 'own' anything but the right to listen to it, and even then only if they pay a recurring charge. From the looks of this system the best you could call it is renting, and that's a stretch.
-R
Subscription services have already been done. They don't work. Period. iTunes works because you 'own the bits'. That, my friend is why they have sold more music to more customers than any other online pay service COMBINED, and it only took them two weeks.
Some of those 7500 songs will come in the form of full albums, which are only $9.99, and frequently come with more than 10 songs. Put me in the Own My Bits camp.
"Of course it will expire once you stop paying the sub fee, but which do you think is the better deal: $7500 to fill a 30GB player (7500 songs at $1 each) with iTunes Music Store, or $120 a year with the ability to swap in new music whenever you want"
And if this subscripton doesn't have the music you want? What are you supposed to do - SWITCH and lose your existing collection.
And when the price doubles what do you do then? Lose your collection or continue paying!
and how about 5 times? How much can Gates raise the price before you give up your collection?
What happens when the choice is crap and your paying just to play your existing music?
Ironically, the appeal of the Apple music store is that you "own" the titles that you buy for. I believe that many people rather choose to pay for specific offers, instead of subscribing to some service.
By way of example: I pay for cable TV, and I have certain expectations. Especially, I don't expect stuff to be worthwile to keep after (possibly) timeshifting it; if there's a movie, series, mini-series I feel I might watch more than once or twice, I'm quite willing to pay some premium to get (practically) unlimited rights to it. Apple's offer is not unlimited, but it's close enough for me to accept it.
On the other hand, a music subscription service, for me, is full of hassles. I need an Internet connection to have my right to listen confirmed; I might need to stream stuff, at potentially low quality, I can't use the devices I want to, etc. pp. In essence, I don't "own" the music.
A newspaper or magazine subscription is similiar in that I don't care that much about last month's issue (with most publications, anyway), but with my personal interest in music, I want to be able to "own" a recording, and rest calmly knowing that I can listen to it when I want, not when some commerical service deems appropriate.
I'd rather go somewhere else where the music is better, the downloads are virtually unlimited and the sound quality is the best of any subscription service on the net (Lame VBR encoded MP3s).
What am I talking about? EMusic of course.
No, they don't have stuff like Britney Spears and Led Zeppelin, but they have more excellent indie, experimental, electronic, metal, jazz, punk, classical and uncategorizable music than you could ever listen to in a lifetime. If you're sick of Clear Channel bullshit and hungry for something exciting and interesting, it is a feast.
And you get to keep every single file you have downloaded. Permanently.
(I know they had some trouble recently with their new servers wbut that seems to be resolved now)
Part of the "advantage" of Microsoft's DRM is that the files will expire if you don't pay your bills. So you don't really own the songs. You're subscribing to a service, like cable.
Finding God in a Dog
Anyway, I'd prefer a rental system with an option to buy. I could then fill the device with rental music, and when I decide I like something enough to want it permanently, I'd buy it.
No, you don't own it at all.
I've read articles which say Microsoft is getting Mp3 playing device makers to add "clocks" so that the music will be able to time out if you stop paying.
Microsoft seems sure that consumers will find renting music more desirable than owning it. Personally, I think they're crazy.
I'm not sure about quality, but I doubt Microsoft themselves would support Linux.
At the risk of sounding like someone who feeds trolls and replies to flame-bait, you're a scumbag. I for one am NOT a pirate, and have no problem paying for what I want. I'll admit that I have used services like Kazaa and was REALLY into Napster when it was new, but it still is and always has been theft.
The incentive to buy is exactly the what you mentioned. If you like a band, you buy their music so that you can support them and they'll make more. It's just like potato chips or caffeine vendors, buy their stuff and they'll make more and continue to innovate. Don't buy it and they'll consider the venture a failure and stop doing whatever it was no matter what you thought about it.
It's not about cluelessness about P2P, it's about paying for a product that someone else produces and you're enjoying the benefits of.
Good points. With a tethered subscription service you will have to somehow authenticate from each device you want to play a song from. That means you must have internet access from the device and knowing ms they will make it a pita or completely impossible to play from any machine other than a ms windows pc with ie, wmp, and spylladium installed. And if they do succeed in sucking in a lot of customers, the terms of service will be modified accordingly to feed the beast.
Renting music is sort of like having cable TV. You can enjoy whatever the operator happens to make available at that time. But when you own the music (or DVD or book or whatever), you don't have to be concerned about whether the things you want to hear will one day be unavailable because of lack of demand or other reasons.
How much music does a normal person acquire in a year (legally or otherwise)? I have every CD that I own on my 10GB iPod -- plus various MP3s from other sources -- and it's still only half full. The issue as it was framed in this question ($7,500 for ownership vs. $120 a year for rental) is absurb, because people don't buy thousands of dollars of music at once. The real question is whether you want to be committed to listening to whatever a subscription service wants you to listen to OR be able to spend a tiny amount of money on a song or album when you happen to feel like it. The subscription model does at least three bad things: 1) It takes away your ability to legally own music for as long as you want it, 2) It takes away your freedom to time your purchases to your own whims or budget, and 3) It takes away your ability to "vote with your money" to give the market feedback about what you want to buy.
I understand the theoretical allure of a subscription model, but I believe it's one of those things that looks best when it's in theory. In practice, people want to buy what they want when they want AND they want to be able to own it. (You can argue about whether Apple's mild restrictions are too strict concerning what you can do with the file, but that's another argument. For me, Apple's approach basically means that I can do virtually anything that a normal music consumer wants to do with his music.)
apple sells it's music in AAC, not mp3 nor ogg.
MABASPLOOM!
you are such a baby..apples "drm" is hardly there.....what "drm" system lets you burn unlimited cds?
:-(....that is pretty weak ass drm is you ask me and it will be a matter of weeks before a shareware maker comes up with a program that takes your aac files...tricks iTunes into writing them to a cd Image and then allowing you to rip to mp3 from the cdImage.
oh poo you can't encode streight to mp3...I can only make a cdda cd
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
$120 for a year
120 bucks a year works to 6 CDs a year . I doubt any music company is going to allow such a scheme to go forward.The catch is that the music industry expects a certain amount of money from a person (or family) per year.Apple is paying that money. And I am sure that if MS is too meet that, it would work out to something around 4 or fve times that. To top it you have to factor in the cost of the player (you probably need a portable, a car sterio and a computer ) which need to be DRM enabled.
And I wonder if I have only 6 songs in my playlist and I have license to have 10, can I share my password with my friend so that he can download those 4?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
At the risk of coming off as a low-down thief (aren't we all...), why on earth would anyone do this? If you have access to a store and you're looking to load items in your pockets, I see no incentive when you can get any item you want, as many as you want, FOR FREE with a quick grab or using one of the dozens of shoplifting techniques now available.
There are, as I see it, some advantages to buying the item (directly support producers, etc.), but what's the incentive to buy this unless the customer is so clueless that they do not even know about shoplifting?
Bitchslapped. Neat.
I think Microsoft business people are missing one key point: owning things is an intrinsic part of being human.
This does not mean that rental or subscription-based services will fail, it just means that owning media SHOULD be part of the deal. This also means that Apple should (besides selling songs) also contemplate renting songs for a specified amount of time (say, 25 or 50 cents for 1 year?).
In other words, we need BOTH options, since people WILL want to own certain songs, but just rent others. Just look at the DVD market. People buy the movies they love (Matrix, Star Wars), but rent the ones they just want to have a good night with (i.e.: Van Damme and Steve Segal movies come to mind).
The point is that the songs you get from Apple should work on Linux once you have them. As long as there is a Linux AAC player, there is no reason that they wouldn't. My guess is that Microsoft is going to rent the files in their own closed format and sue anyone who tries to make their own player for it.
Well for myself I'd want to burn it to CD to I could listen to it in the car. And the clincher is - what happens if the "great experiment" fails?
With Apple's offering I own the music and can put it onto CD, if Microsoft pulls the plug my music collection evaporates a month after it stops. Let's not forget paying that bill (no pun intended) may not be our decision, they may find that the service isn't cost effective. Come to it, they might hike the price up, so you're held hostage by your music collection. On refection I like Apple's view of music better.
I wish I could mod you up. Because the parent poster is basically saying: "what's the point of being honest?", with the obvious implication that only heavily intrusive technologies will force people to be honest in their purchases.
We've gone over add-nauseaum for years now all the reasons why many people might use P2P. It always boils down to the fact that the RIAA is an old dinausor that is incapable of adapting to consumer wishes.
Apple has an interesting service that makes a very decent step towards giving consumers what they want. Want an analysis? Answer this question then: What's more expensive? Something you'll pay for the privilege of using for the rest of your life, or something you'll buy once for a dollar.
In the end, these people just want gravy trains: products they can charge the consumer for over and over again without adding any new value. Hey, that sounds like taxes.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
You mean like this program? It takes the audio output from pretty much any source, including a running program like iTunes, and encodes it into mp3 or AIFF. It can even pipe the sound data into a command-line program so you can encode using FLAC, Lame, Ogg, or whatever.
Pretty sweet program. You can even use it like to do timed recordings of internet radio shows, kind of like a Tivo for streaming audio.
Sapere aude!
And if you let your subscription lapse, but later renew it, do you get use back of all the previous downloads, or are those files now no good so you have to start over from scratch?
Another issue: say they HAD stuff you wanted at first, but later they have only pop crap. You'd still have to maintain your sub to keep use of your existing files, even tho nothing currently offered is of interest and may not be for years to come.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They get some money per tune. They make the music easier to get than with downloading. You can even download a couple times and not get charged so your money is not wasted.
The DRM approach is foolish. No matter what, people will be able to move the music outside the DRM. Why not get enough cash up front for the whole thing to be worth it?
That is exactly how the current CD model works now and they have made plenty of money doing it.
Streaming via monthly subscription sort of works, if you don't mind sitting at your computer to listen. The Satellite and Cable people have been doing this for a while now and people like it. Think about those systems a bit. The music can still move, but it takes a bit of work to do that. Plus there is some value in their rotating playlists. It would take quite a while to reproduce a couple days of their service in a way that makes sense. So, people pay.
Subscription DRM where you basically give up all your rights to your own damn hardware are not going to fly when perfectly workable business models exist that work with what we have now.
Seems to me Apple has understood something most companies don't. Though, they could save some time and read Slash. Most of us have this down cold for a few years now... Heh.
BTW: I purchase DVD media instead of rent and or pay per view because I do want to have some ownership of the bits. Costs more that way, but I find it very worth it.
Blogging because I can...
I hope Apple gets its Windows version of iTunes quickly. Microsoft has a habit of making mediocre software available quickly, taking advantage of its large installed base, eliminating competition, then ceasing improvement.
People will pay for music, as they've demonstrated. Provide them a good interface and give them a reasonable deal and they'll pay. I think a lot of people find $1 per song to be a reasonable price, and iTunes is far easier to use than Kazaa/Gnutella. Most people don't want to hack, they don't want to circumvent DRM, they don't want to wait forever to download music, and they sure don't want spyware. They're happy to pay a fair price for the service.
My worry may be misplaced, because unlike other Microsoft placements, this won't be free. Even if it comes on your computer for free (and people are upgrading much more slowly than they used to, so just providing it with the OS doesn't provide the channel that it used to), you still have to sign up and pay. Microsoft is pretty good at tricking people into doing so; the service will assuredly use Passport and they can be very...insistent about signing up for a Passport account.
But a lot of people won't pay, because it's too much trouble for them. Many of those who will pay will go the extra step to get Apple's software. That is, of course, assuming that Apple gets the software out. It's claimed it for the fall, but Microsoft can probably get its software out at least that quickly and into a "service pack" for Windows.
That also assumes Microsoft intends to actually develop the software at all. Microsoft doesn't even need to develop software at this point. Many users will read the announcement and forget about Apple's take on it, because they'll assume it'll come free with their next computer.
It won't make them happy, but my basic assumption in marketing is that users are lazy. Look at the number of people whose home page is still MSN because they never bothered to get a different browser or even to change the home page to something they care about. Users will put up with a lot of crap if it means no effort. It takes a very smart company to work around that laziness.
I hope Apple can be that company, because it's the best shot I've seen at getting music to people and money to musicians I've seen yet. It's not perfect for a host of reasons (mainly due to the record studios and Clear Channel), but I think it's the right compromise today.
This seems typical of Redmond.
Rent rent rent. This is the current plan, when the customer stops paying - *ZIP!* they're screwed.
It's exactly what is on the cards with Palladium (NGSCB), no longer do you own your copy of MS Office, but you rent it, leaving yourself liable to increases in the rental cost that started out oh-so-reasonable (XBox Live anyone?).
Should you fail to keep up with payments then all of your work for the last couple of years (documents, letters, spreadsheets, project plans etc. etc.) is down the drain... gone. It is all part of a very obvious strategy to lock people tighter and tighter into the godawful overrated buggy mess that is MS software...
And the worst thing is that *the average Joe does not see this*!
Now, Microsoft see's another company (Apple) which has worked incredibly hard, battling against the stubborness of the 5 big labels, encoding hundreds of thousands of songs, doing all the groundwork, figuring out the streaming system to get high-quality streams to anyone anywhere in the world instantly for the previews etc. etc. Microsoft see's this company (GASP!) actually reap some monetary reward for this hard hard work and surprise, the fat and greedy "software" company wants it... all of it.
Why, Microsoft, if you wanted to get into the online music business, was it not YOU that took the risk of being first, why was it not YOUR money on the line opening a new market to users, why was it not YOUR reputation in the balance of a high profile gamble???
I know this is Slashdot, and I know this is repeated many times a day, but believe me, never with more spirit and emotion than I feel now - when will the consumer teach Microsoft a lesson?
Has the semi-failure of the XBox been the first high-profile dent to MS made by the consumer at large? Perhaps... it is sure to say that the consumer is resisting these monopolistic practises... but how long will this last... MS has the cash to pay out for an XBox 2 and an Xbox 3 until Sony and Nintendo are gradually put out of the game for the sheer fact that MSoft's bottom line can go deeper than theirs?
It remains to be seen... perhaps this will be one of those half-hearted assault on a competitior like iMovie versus Windows Movie Maker (hehehe). We DO know that Apple's traditional strengths (design, quality, usability, friendliness, media-related software) are the things that Microsoft has the most difficulty in achieving.
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
But Microsoft's spiffy new DRM doesn't exist yet. We're all debating the merits of something that they might not even be able to bring to market. This reminds me of all the discussion prior to iTunes. Even though the broad strokes of the Apple Music Store were fairly well known, the devil is in the details. It wasn't until the product launched that anyone could really tell how useful it would be.
Microsoft's number one goal here is to thwart Apple's Windows version of the Music Store before it even launches. The best way for them to do that is to float various alternatives, watch the responses, and adjust accordingly.
While this is in keeping with their corporate character, it's also not the sort of approach that leads to a well-integrated user experience. The Apple Music Store was obviously built around making consumers happy, and it shows in all the little details. Microsoft is racing to catch up to Apple in this arena, and at this point the only way they can gain some momentum is by comparing vaporware to the Apple Music Store.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
CD: $10.
Song from iTunes: $0.99
Not paying a cent to Microsoft: Priceless
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'd rather own the music for $7500 than be held hostage by Microsoft. I want to be able to move my music around, burn CDs, listen to it on my DVD player or stereo... I'm tired of technology developed for the lowest denominator in society, making it difficult to enjoy the primary purpose of having the technology in the first place. I don't mind paying for what I want. This is something that both commercial and "free" software proponents have to learn. Ironically, I was willing to pay for music downloads (from MP3.com, long before iTunes). If schemes like Microsoft's become prevalent, Kazaa and the like will thrive. iTunes proves that people are willing to pay to download music... that everyone who uses P2P software is not a pirate. I'm willing to pay for music to own it. Renting music is a stupid model. And I don't trust Microsoft.
I think you're underestimating the nostalgia factor. Haven't you ever come across an old album, listened to it for "old times's sake", and then find yourself listening over and over as you rediscover why you bought it in the first place? I don't have hard numbers but most of the people I know admit to having that experience, multiple times. People like their record collections. All of these download services undermine that tactile feel.
Plus, I don't think the average consumer is as dumb as everyone else thinks. Wait for the first Windows bug to crash the MS music server, causing subscriptions to terminate abruptly. Then watch everyone move to a different model.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Of course it will expire once you stop paying the sub fee, but which do you think is the better deal: $7500 to fill a 30GB player (7500 songs at $1 each) with iTunes Music Store, or $120 a year with the ability to swap in new music whenever you want? How much is it worth to you to "own" the bits?"
:
Which of these is a better deal?
1) Pay $1 now, get the one song you want to hear, keep it forever.
2) Pay $10 now, get the one song you want to hear, keep paying $10 a month for the right to listen to it.
Apple pretty clearly has a better deal if you buy ten or fewer songs a month (or 120 songs a year). I suspect that this suits a very wide variety of people.
Beyond that is a grey area, where the better deal basically depends on how much you value the convenience of not having to pay a monthly fee whether you use it or not.
At the other end are those who could conceivably want to download (say) 30GB of music in a month, which is certainly more than I can listen to in that time. Ignoring bandwidth costs on both ends, these users are probably just as likely to use P2P services and not pay anyone at all!
The emphasised ability to 'swap in' new music implies that every month you'll want to download all-new material. Not bloody likely, in my experience. But then, if you don't download new material, what exactly are you paying for? The right to listen to music you already paid for!?
The worst part about this kind of scheme is some people can actually be suckered into it.
[This post also makes the rediculous claim that filling up a 30GB iPod is going to cost you $7500,
which ignores the fact that nobody is going to actually do that. At some point, even your average idiot realizes that it'll probably be cheaper rip CDs he already owns, (and those newly purchased -- yes, even people with iPods still buy CDs from time to time!) -- it makes me wish I could mod the whole story as a Troll.]
I am interested in hearing realistic scenarios in which the subscription service actually is a good deal, but I've yet to hear one thus far.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.