Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Launch Online Music Store
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."
Rosoff: Wasn't I supposed to say this bit about how we allow customers to burn downloaded playlists ten times?
Director: Oops. Sorry. I forgot to blank that out.
Rosoff: And what's this Apple logo doing over here?
Director: Like I said, I forgot to blank some things out. We're done. Thanks. Go home.
Finally, an alternative to the monopolistic Apple iTunes!
Oh, wait...
Right is wrong when left is right.
None of these hurdles is trivial, particularly in a business such as selling downloadable music, where actual margins remain only a few pennies per song sold. The real core of Microsoft's goal has little to do with e-commerce and everything to do with selling Windows, analysts said.
No it has nothing to do with selling Windows. It has to do with furthering the MSFT domination in every single technological market that they can slide their way into. The XBox hardware doesn't make them money but they are still getting their name out there and making money via some other channel (additional hardware, monthly Live subscriptions, royalties, whatever).
This is going to be no different. Get the people used to the MSN Music Store. Get them buying songs. Get them buying hardware. Get them used to seeing it in Windows. Make it an integral part of Windows. DRM the BIOS, DRM the OS, and DRM the Music, DRM the hardware/player, RIAA is happy, people get their Music, people are happy, money comes in, Bill is happy.
When the market is comfortable with seeing WMP and MSN media everywhere they are going to LOVE seeing it in their favorite theatre, on their favorite DVD, etc. Then the MPAA is happy and they will happily embrace the format which they are currently rejecting.
What I want to know is when WMP is going to just NOT work when you won't let it phone in what you have been watching/listening to. I've been waiting for that day to come. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in WMP10-1 or WMP11. It's not like 99% of the people don't know that it is doing it and it's not like they care if it is. Most of these people don't have firewalls and even if they do they happily click to allow it to connect out permanently. Anything to make that annoying little box stop popping up.
Tin foil alert level is currently Orange but may raise when the MSN music store gains a foothold.
The RIAA should love to be associated intimately with Microsoft for the same reason that a plump girl should hang out with fat girls - to look good by comparison.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The launch of Microsoft's iTunes rival will be timed along with the beta release of Microsoft's new Windows Media Player 10
http://www.micro soft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/default.aspx
WMP10 Beta has been out for a while, so that's kind of confusing..
Microsoft will immediately become number two, and perhaps number one, if not almost straight away, with a shoddier product, and years earlier than they'd otherwise have been able to had it not been for Apple once again pioneering this market.
Let's see- Micro$osft unites with RIAA and MPAA. Next up will be Micro-Pec Oil, Micro-China Manufacturing, etc.... Does anyone else see the impending doom ?
And I own the most popular portable music player, so um, how do they expect to entice me to switch? Like Real did with their half priced songs? ****a please.
I haven't even up(down)graded to WMP 9 yet, it's so sticky with DRM issues.
but really, if all of the others haven't really made a dent in the iTMS market share, how does MS intend to?.
I guess the same thing was said a while ago by the executives at netscape.
A group of hackers announced today that they have cracked the DRM on Microsoft's new online music. Upon hearing the news, Steve Ballmer responded by getting mad and punching a hole in the wall.
Unknown host pong.
These people have no shame!
I quit using Napster because I didn't really like the Windows Media Player, or the Microsoft DRM technology. Why would I switch back just because MS has their own music store? The music store marketplace is becoming too saturated now and the only way for anyone to distinguish themselves is with a great hardware accessory - like Apple's iPod.
Apple is well in the lead and I don't see them losing the lead unless MS comes up with something better than just another "hey, me too!" store.
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
There's no way that Microsoft's music store will anything like the cachet that the iTunes Music Store has. Microsoft, as a hip brand name, trails far behind Jenny Craig Mac & Cheese. But then again, if they make their songs playable on every non-iPod device out there, they'll pick up the lion's share of the market in no time. Good luck getting it all to work right, though.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
"The store will also be in beta mode, lacking some of the features that will be added later"
No to be a picky bastard or anyhing, but projects without full features was called alpha state to me, last time I checked, while full featured, still in-test is beta.
Isn't this how all their software works ?
..first need a device to be an "IPod killer" until I RTA
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.
"There is only a one in six billion chance that you actually exist"
Cant they leave anything alone, do they have to absorb EVERTHING, then reduce its quality.
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..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The store will also be in beta mode, lacking some of the features that will be added later, sources said.
Like security?
Err...no. The name "SQL Server" comes from Sybase, the company who they originally licensed from. It's also why both Sybase and MS SQL Server have quite a bit in common with Transact SQL, though they vary significantly in dialect.
Cheers,
Ian
I know some of the other posters say similar things, but I think it's good to make how it works explicit.
:-).
You buy a copy of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 87.
You click in the "My Music" folder.
The happy little Windows XP(tm) screen comes up with the bar on the left with lots of options.
The top option is "Buy music from the Microsoft Music Store".
Click on that option, IE comes up and the downloads are automatically added to the My Music folder. You can then use the music player features built into the Music folder to play them.
It will be easy and seamless. It won't be as slick as the iTunes+iPod combo, but like Windows itself, it will be Good Enough.
By the way, I had an interesting talk with a friend of mine about why he likes Windows. He's a crusty old man, and it turns out the pretty girls in his neighborhood turn to him for their Windows problem fixes in exchange for sexual favours, and the guys give him beer. He blesses Bill Gates every day for putting together such a "shitty product"! He also likes the challenge. So he's well stocked with beer, women and challenges, which makes for a fun retirement indeed.
I had to laugh. He has a point
D
\ MS will say that they are at the top of their game, until they are (which in some cases is never). They have the money to make mistakes like no one else. They can have no features, barest functionality, poor implementation, and still create hype and users - all through the marvel of $$$.
The Apple iTunes store doesn't have anything to worry about for a long while, but MS will beat their dead horse until its a threat. Not a big threat. Nobody cool is going to use MS's service.
At the end of the day - that's what it's all about.
IE was given away free and was (still is) a very bare bones browser. Netscape could have survived by one-upping IE on a feature by feature level and selling a low cost, high value Netscape Gold package that enabled surfers to do something 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.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Think about it.. how much lower is his bottom line because his R&D costs are that much less?
He's not just following Apple, BTW. Dell's got the Jukebox, Rio was the first portable MP3 player out there IIRC, there are a handful of USB key/MP3 players out there as well. MSFT is just capitalizing on the settling player market, getting in when the cost to develop the technology is the lowest. They'll pick and choose the featureset of the lowest common denominator, undercut all the other devices on the market, then when everybody's migrated to the Microsoft WinTunes (I disagree with an earlier poster's guess at the name), they'll release the Media Player so it can *only* connect with the WinTunes player, and use the profits to fight off another round of anti-trust lawsuits.
Or something like that.
Oracle and PostgreSQL are RDBMSs, database servers, not SQL servers. SQL Server® is the registered trademark of the Micros...*ack*..*choke*
Responsibility is the punishment for compentenc
With all the brainpower here, it's surprising that nobody's asked "why is Microsoft doing this?"
When iTMS came out, MS said explicitly that it wasn't going to get into the music download business. It's partners (or, I suppose, potential victims) already had large investments in online storefronts, and its other partners already sold WMA-enabled devices.
So why did MS decide to get into music?
I think the HP/Apple deal had something to do with it. One of MS' biggest customers went with another vendor (Apple). That must have galled MS. The PC side has device vendors and music stores, but there was no single-vendor solution. The WMA hardware vendors were probably complaining to Mama that MS wasn't helping them on the software side.
And when you look at it, how stable is are the WMA-based music stores? Real? Napster? Wal-Mart? Any of them could flake out at any moment, deciding that the business wasn't good enough. None of them are stable enough for a real long-term partnership.
By providing an MS music store, MS removes one barrier to WMA-based music stores: vendor instability. It supports the WMA-licensees. It opens up licensing opportunities.
Note there's no consumer benefit here, really.
The question is will MS be able to run this afterthought storefront?
iTMS is about the iPod, not Apple. People use iTMS because it's easy and nice to use, and it works with their pod. MS Music is about...hardware vendor support?
It'll be interesting to see how long MS Music lasts, and more interesting to see who the first few licensees will be.
You know my company, CD Baby, is one of the companies supplying a huge chunk of music to iTunes, Rhapsody, Emusic, Napster, etc.
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.
The store will also be in beta mode, lacking some of the features that will be added later, sources said.
Seems to me that lately, Beta no longer means a testing phase. It now means "Hurry and saturate the market with an incomplete product so we can make money now and take business away from competitors!"
Converting a song to WMA is kind of like bootlegging a concert by sitting in the nosebleed section of a coliseum and recording with a palm-sized dictaphone with a built-in mic. Sure it sounds a *little* like the music. But who would want to listen to it. Much less *pay* for it.
I'd rather listen to my dad play Glenn Miller Orchestra tunes on a kazoo than be subjected to anything encoded in WMA.
Don't even get me started on all that "Please wait while we contact the server and check out your license to play this song..." crap that goes in Windows Media Player.
If this is going to be the competition for iTunes, they've got nothing to worry about.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
What do you mean IE is a bare-bones browser? IE's 4.0 supported XML / CSS at a time when Netscape 4.0 was a baby.
I have used IE 5.0/5.5/6.0 for developing applications from 2000 onwards and i have always the features packed in to IE far, far better than Netscape.
IE supported XHTML/XML/XSL scripting and DOM model before Netscape even knew what they were. Microsoft implemented most standards including CSS stuff like tags which were proposed by W3c.org when no other browser supported them.
IE was lightning ahead of other browsers when it came to implementing new standards.
Before you start generic Microsoft thrashing make sure you know the facts.
I use Firefox now.-:))
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
listen to my dad play Glenn Miller Orchestra tunes on a kazoo
Got a torrent?
iTunes only authenticates a song purchased by a user that hasn't been played on the computer before. Once you enter the proper password, it no longer goes through the authentication process, and you can play offline to your heart's content.
Coincidentally, this can also be used to circumvent the five comp limit on protected AACs; authorize five computers to play your tunes, then use Apple's web form to de-authenticate those machines. The nifty thing is, this process is only done on Apple's end, so the five computers still think they're authorized. You can now allow five more machines to play your songs. As long as the first five never go online ever again, you're set. ^_^
Thanks a million. Push Start to replay.