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Microsoft to Launch MSN Music Service in 2004
securitas writes "SmartMoney.com reports that a Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed plans to launch an online music download service in 2004 via the MSN Web site. The story was first reported in the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required). Microsoft may undercut the per-song prices of competitors Apple iTunes and Roxio Napster. A reliable source is cited as saying that Microsoft has been in talks with major music companies and a post for a senior-level marketing position for the service was added to Microsoft's recruiting site last week. Observers expect that the company will use Windows or the bundled Windows Media Player to gain a competitive advantage over other services that require a software download to use them. Interestingly, in this May 2003 analysis piece about Apple's iTunes Microsoft denied any plans to launch a music download service. More at CNet."
The Sherman Act prohibits the use of a monopoly to leverage entry into other markets, and it'll be a clear violation of the Act if they bundle their music download service with WMP.
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Hang on, don't they already do this? At least in the UK, I already have access to the service, and have downloaded 4 tracks already, which could be burned to a CD for 99p ($1.60?) each. It already works via WMP 9. Maybe we're just the guineapigs.
BTW, due to an interesting set of circumstances, you can download Tubular Bells parts (sides) 1 and 2 as one 99p track each, or the whole album for 7.99! (assuming 1 credit=1p; this can vary)
Phil
The problem is that MS includes media player with the default windows install. In fact, there is no way to remove it. Furthermore, they have put their own add on software into the OS at a very low level and load at system boot (ala IE) to make their software appear much faster. Unless they agree to do that with iTunes, musicmatch, etc, then they are abusing their monopoly.
This would basically represent the exact anti-trust case which they lost. The justice department could just replace all instances of IE with Media Player and resubmit the lawsuit. And just to be consistent, after the DoJ won the case, they would have to roll over and give MS a sweetheart deal.
AAC is MPEG4 which is a standard.
The important questions from all Europeans: When will we be able to use it?
My guess is: never. The EU is already investigating Microsoft for anti-trust violations, has apparently taken a rather dimmer view of their behavior than the DOJ in the US, and has specifically mentioned the bundled Microsoft media player as infringing.
My guess is that the EU will require Microsoft to unbundle the media player for the European market, at least; I suppose that it would still be available as a download, but I can see that Microsoft may "cut off it's nose to spite it's face" ie not make the player available at all, to spin the judgement against them as "dooming the EU market to a second-class status".
Judgement on this case is expected in March; I guess we'll know then.
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$tar -xvf
Broadband has reached market saturation?
"Um, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there, yeah."
Maybe it's approaching saturation in South Korea, but there's still a LOT of room to grow in the US (which *IS* the locale we're talking about here, right?).
The US is still something like *5th* in the world in per-capita broadband access -- behind South Korea, Japan, Canada (and, if 5th is right, a player to be named later because I can't remember who it is).
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
They're big enough that they may be able to muscle the record companies into cutting them a deal for the songs.
Well, since WalMart has a revenue stream 10x that of Microsoft's and makes a higher quarterly profit than MS, not to mention the fact that the have a pre-existing relationship with the labels, they should be able to get an even better deal from the record companies. That means they'll be able to undercut whatever Microsoft tries to establish as a new price point.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Actually I thought all console makers lost $$$ on the units and made it up in software sales. It was just that MS lost more $$ per console in order to price the same as the PS2.
The Sherman Act prohibits the use of a monopoly to leverage entry into other markets, and it'll be a clear violation of the Act if they bundle their music download service with WMP.
I'm not sure this is exactly true. Sherman Section 1 prohibits "tying" when it's used in restraint of trade. Unless MS is requiring that you join the MSN music service, they're not by definition tying. Coke dropping a free sample in my mailbox is analogous-- the product is sitting in my lap (for free) but by no means am I required to buy Coke at the store...
FYI, there's actually a lot of backlash against the MS anti-trust case right now in academic circles. I am by no means an MS apologist, but a lot of what went on behind the scenes was IBM/Oracle/Sun coopting the political/legal system to hamstring their chief competitor. In America at least, I'm not sure there's any gaurantee that a similar case (substitue WMP for IE) would necessarily get interpreted the same way. MS has learned how to play the game (read political donations), i think...
Console makers generally sell the console for as close to cost as practically possible, usually, over time, making a profit on the things as manufacturing costs dwindle (which is why they're able to make price cuts.) Before Microsoft, only Sega attempted to sell consoles with this model, which is why they ended up having to withdraw from the market.
Console makers do make the bulk of the money on the games, which is where this wierd idea they lose money on consoles came from.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Does iTunes depend on the Safari rendering engine...?
Yes and no. It depends on the engine, called WebCore, IIRC, but it does not depend on Safari--Safari itself depends on WebCore, as does (in 10.3) Help and Mail. While this is in that regard akin to QuickTime, from what i've read, it's intended more as just another OS-level service. Do you worry about competition for providers of scroll-bars or combo boxes? Apple fan though i may be, it seems a strain to ascribe any sinister motive to Safari.
Amen brother! Back when CDs firt came out I thought of something very similar. There was a Rush albumn I wanted but it was missing one song to make it perfect (Spirit of Radio and Tom Sawyer weren't on the same albumn). I ended up buying Chronicles so I had them both but that incident lead me to come up with a similar solution.
I never thought of the advantages for the store but it's there. Then again, they probably view the fact that I bought a double CD versus a single as a win b/c I spent more than I wanted.
uh. no selling at volume while selling at a loss, just increases your losses, unless you have a pretty strong correlation with some non-loss item.
For example, once the world market for iPods is saturated, the iTunes model will fail, because there is nothing left to balance out the loss from the music.
On the other hand, with the xBox, there will always be new market for new games, so the xbox can be sold until xbox is saturated. Once the market for xbox is saturated, MS profits will actually rise, because they are getting the game profit, without the box loss.
Of course in both of these models, obsolecense might set in before saturation is reached, but then the cycle just begins again.
"Because they broke Windows 3.1 running under DR-DOS and made it look like an DR-DOS error."
That is not what happened. A beta version of Windows 3.1 popped up an error message (Note: Not a crash, simply an error message that you okay to get through.) that said you're not running MS-DOS. This did not appear in the commercial version of Windows 3.1.
Monopoly conspiracies aside, there is a legitimate reason for said message to exist: Microsoft can't fix Dr Dos if it's broken.
Microsoft may or may not have been 'evil' with that event. Doesn't really matter that much. It didn't 'broke' Windows 3.1 with DR-DOS, nor was it out of the bounds of something reasonable to do during a beta.
Getting back on topic here, I'd be surprised if Microsoft broke something that gave Mac users an edge.
"Derp de derp."
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!