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Microsoft Developing iPod, iTMS Competitor
Software writes "Reuters reports that Microsoft is developing an iPod and iTunes Music Store competitor. Few details are available, but it's known that Robbie Bach (the man behind the Xbox) is heading up the project." From the article: "Most iTunes rivals charge monthly fees to access a catalog of entertainment, but some allow consumers to buy individual songs for about $1 each. Microsoft's service will emphasize the pay-per-download, or a la carte, model, the sources said. A subscription component will also be offered, according to early accounts of the planned service. One source, who has seen a demonstration of the service, said it was an improvement over iTunes."
All a new commer has to do is to talk Apple's customers into give up their iPods and around $2bn of purchased content, after that they can sell on the basis of better devices and new sales/subscription models.
"One source" [cough]Robbie Bach[/cough]", who has seen a demonstration of the service, said it was an improvement over iTunes."
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
!!?
<grrr
"...Robbie Bach (the man behind the Xbox) is heading up hte[sic] project." So that means the controls will be unecessariliy large?
Gee, I wonder if that source was an Apple rep.
Now that the market is almost saturated... why would I bother to switch from iTunes and my video ipod (which I just bought with my Macbook Pro) to an MS service? Are they going to seriously undercut prices? No.
Does anyone seriously disagree with me that Windows Media Player is a bloated piece of shit? Ever since like.. version... 6.4? MS has been trying to add every possible little thing to it... they are trying to make it so that it is the ONLY program you will ever need to run on your PC... personally I am all for decentralization but I realise there are some users who want to open up one program and then start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app (a few years off in WMP)...
This is it.
The ipod killa.
Pop a 40 Steve, because Bill is about to pop a cap in your lickable bar of techno soap.
or
2. yawn, another ipod killer story.
Take your pick
Buying tunes through XBox live marketplace, and transferring them from the box to the player would open the door to a huge untapped group of consumers who don't have (or want) a PC, but probably have (or wouldn't mind) a game console.
I would be shocked to find out that this isn't the route MS plans to take, the 360 being your entertainment-hub and all.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm not a geek then, because I've never replied to a tagline before.
The easy way to win this competition, at least among the audiophiles that care, is to avoid DRM in all its manifestations for the new service. Not that it's likely, given that it's a MS service, but I speculate that doing so would gain an instant market share.
Meh, a real sig would take too long, and I have an MMORPG to play with....
However any music store that intends to compete with itms is going to have to support the iPod - there are just too many ipods aren't to try and do anything else.
So if ms did support both the iPOD and their on Plays4Sure players, then i think they would stand a good chance to uprooting Apple. Especially considering they can run the store at a loss for years.
It's always great to see MS on the cutting edge of consumer trends. Where do they come up with these wildly original ideas?
The odds of Microsoft successfully pulling this off successfully are practically zero. One of these key components are bound not to show up, so I imagine people will have a copy itunes installed on their machine along with whatever Microsoft has.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I thought Microsoft partnered up with MTV to make Urge. Are they going to have multiple subscription services? If so, will customers have to pay $5/mo or whatever for each? Or will one payment grant you access to the "Microsoft Music Network" that has Urge, Splurge, and whatever other music store they come up with in the future?
Is it just me, or does it look like ever since Steve Ballmer took over the reigns Microsoft's business plan can be summed up as "Whatever Google/Apple is doing, we're gonna compete with that."?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Come on, don't they make this announcement every second week?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Too bad it isn't the good ole days when the hint of a future MS product could freeze competitor's sales. Old habits die hard I guess.
No wireless. Less space than an iPod. Lame.
Yes, but does it matter? Bundling has worked and spoiled the marketplace. Take IM for example. A few years ago, it was ICQ, AIM. Other latecomers came, like Yahoo! and Google Talk but never seemed to have taken any marketshare. Another newcomer was MSN Messenger. One would think that ICQ/AIM would still be tops dogs. Not true, even not in Europe. For a while ICQ seemed to be most popular over here, but I worked at a school for a while and the only thing the students seemed to use was MSN, all with a hotmail.com address including Passport. I still both have an AIM and an ICQ account (I know they are technically the same), but strangely enough nobody ever seems to be online there anymore.
Media player? Same thing: none of these kids uses WinAmp, iTunes, Realplayer to play media. They all use our good old friend Windows Media Player. Myself I use "Media Player Classic", but that's just me. The thing is that the iPod will make it a tad bit more difficult. Alternatives do not seem to exist for them. Sure, I think the iPod will make it difficult to actually force WMP on people, but those that don't have an iPod will use and recognise WMP. If they brand it correctly (the hardware "replacing" the iPod), the brand recognition will work and they will sell devices.
I never have seen a WMP-less Windows installed anywhere. Even in Europe, we have lost...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
...called URGE. I'm confused.
"They have been developing technologies that have really good music discovery and community," another source said. "iTunes is the 7-11 (of music stores). You don't hang out there."
They have got to be kidding. People spend hours sifting through iTMS. I know people who never close it!
iTMS is like Amazon, people just use it for basic music reference at this point. These people are on crack.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
The way I remember things, in WMP version something or other, MS included support for a few stores, but defaulted to Napster. Sortly after that, didn't Microsoft try an MSN music store, suddenly making that the default over the 3rd party stores in WMP? Then there's a bunch of news about this MS/MTV Urge online music store, I wasn't sure where that leaves the MSN service. It sounds like they're grasping at straws, trying the same things over and over again.
I agree about WMP being lousy... I've tried to use it do sync music with my small (256MB) mp3 player. It's incredibly frustrating to try and get your music ready to copy to the mp3 player. I never use WMP to transfer my music now, I just do it through Explorer, or on Linux, but then I don't have control over the overall order of music. It seems that music within a single folder gets played all together and in the intended order, but I don't know what order the folders will be played. On my sister's non-iPod mp3 player, she can't make the music play in the order she wants, even if she creates a playlist in WMP, and syncs based on that. I never used to understand why non-Apple products don't get as much attention as iPod/iTMS (it seems like a simple thing to copy music to an mp3 player, how bad could everyone be screwing it up?), but now that I have one of the non-Apple players, I can see what a frustrating experience it can be.
I'm not really expecting a brilliant turnaround in Microsoft's next attempt at doing the same thing, the same way, all over again... (what was Benjamin Franklin's definition of insanity, again?)
The Xpod
I can see it now - cheap, overhyped, and bsoding.
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
I can see it now. Microsoft conincides the release of this device with U2's next album. U2 does a commercial for Microsoft dancing and counting to fourteen in a foreign language. But get this... He skips 5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 and 13! Genuis! The next day at work, all anyone can talk about is how much of a fucking idiot Bono is, in that new Microsoft [insert trendy name, like Origami. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound cool] commercial. Hate for Bono drives sales.
Similes are like metaphors
...today Microsoft announced their plans to open a chain of discount retail stores to compete with companies like WalMart and Target. Tentatively called "WinMart", the new stores will carry a large assortment of grocery, clothing, and electronics items, including all the latest Microsoft software releases. "Businesses have to expand to survive," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "As we already control the operating system and productivity markets, we felt a need to expand into a completely unrelated field. Plus, WalMart seems to be very successful; we'd like to put them out of business as we have done to so many other successful companies in the past."
:)
Microsoft will seek to promote synergy between their software and retail arms. "Using a complex algorithm, our exciting new operating system Vista will be able to learn all about its users tastes and habits, through analysis of their websurfing and other computer activities. We can then send our customers personalized circulars containing exciting and valuable coupons for the things they need to buy most. Plus, if they have a webcam connected to their computer, we will be able to store their likeness in our centralized database, and store greeters will be able to welcome them by name as they enter the store."....
(OK, enough of that.
This article is such a troll. And why even mention that ONE SOURCE says it's better than iTunes, if you don't have any details? It's just a troll for responses, and I've been trolled. I must be new here...
Likewise "Search". There's quite a bit of revenue there, of course, but it wasn't until GMail, GTalk, GExcel (just kidding) popped up that MS really felt the heat from google's platform.
No, the iPod is not a platform. But OSX is, and if there isn't a microsofty competitor to the iPod then that little device's users are eventually going to discover that Macintoshes are -- as a whole -- quite a bit better than XP boxes. (Vista I set aside for the time being)
Just thinking aloud here.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
That will be another Microsoft 'innovation' there then.
If this takes any significant market share of iTunes / iPod, I will eat my hat. At the end of the day, it has to be more than 'an improvement' over iTunes - we all know how quickly Apple can roll out big changes to their products, and all it takes is one or two small updates to put Apple back on top IF do release a product which is better.. but (and lets be honest about this) I really doubt they will.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
The AAC lock-in is the only thing I hate about my iPod. It's supposedly possible to play AAC's on Linux, but I haven't been able to get it to work, even after downloading gtkpod, faac, faad, xine, amarok1.4, etc. And you're right that AAC lock-in makes 'plays for sure' a joke.
Not that microsoft lock-in'd be any better, but what if Microsoft were to write a utility to seemlessly convert and/or copy your exisiting iTunes library from AAC (including DRM-AAC) to WMA?
DRM laden AAC is no different form DRM laden WMA, except for the base file format. Each can exist in a form which has no DRM, but the people selling you the music, such as iTMS add it there. If you can remove the DRM appended onto the AAC file then it should play anywhere. Don't forget AAC ( Advanced Audo Coding) is the audio encoding format that is part of MP4, and the licensor is Dolby.
For a given bit rate AAC is actually superior to MP3. I have AACs encoded with iTunes (not iTMS) that play quite happily with Winamp. I won't tell you how to remove the DRM from AACs because I don't know how to, and should testify having as much issue with WMA in this form.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
MS has been rumored to be fiddling around with selling music for years.
There ain't no money in it... Apple sells music at a loss to encourage sales of ipods.
The "wildly successful" xbox also sells at a loss (correct me if I'm mistaken).
So, unless they're determined to burn thru all their cash, what does this mean, if not a perpetuation of overpriced OS & apps to pay for the other stuff?
It's the same thing with the Xbox. the PS2 wiped the floor with it in market share and sales because of the lack of software and that fact that it was FREAKING huge. Also, PS2 came out first and almost nobody buys two current consoles (a lot of times, they are bought separately and when they're getting close to becoming last-gen hardware, i.e. when they get cheap) so everyone figured "I got my PS2, there's a ton more games for it, the graphics are fine for me, so why buy ANOTHER console and have to buy ANOTHER copy of a game I already have for PS2?"
BUT, Xbox 360 is now out. The Xbox was eventually established and now the major selling point for the 360 is the same used for the PS2, backwards-compatibility. PS3 is arriving late, and although it will be more powerful, no one will have a good reason to blow $500-$600 when they JUST bought another console that has more content available to it. Nintendo is smart not to directly compete with the 360 because it would lose. You have the Wii for the simple, social, have-your-friends-over games and the Xbox 360 for the hard-hitting immersive action games.
Anyway, Microsoft is not competing with today's iPod. They're going to be competing with tomorrow's iPod, the one you haven't bought yet. I wouldn't be surprised if this product ends up being a loss-leader. Face it, no one is going to throw away their iPods for another service, no matter how much better it is. But they might consider it when the battery dies yet again, the screen is scratched, they're tired of the music they have, etc. and they're ready for something new. Microsoft will still be there, and by then it will be refined, offering more flexibility and giving you the choice of several different devices. Now if only they can make them look sexy and not like a tape recorder from 1986.
What they'll produce is a second rate player and service. It will attempt to be all things to all record companies and not be all that great a service. What you have to understand is how much Apple pushed the music companies in order to get them to support ITMS.
Remember the major record producers originally had their own "stores". They charged a monthly fee, charged for downloading, and then your music couldn't be transfered to other devices and would expire after two or three months. For some strange reason, it wasn't very popular.
Remember that iTunes and the iPod came out before the ITMS. Apple used it as a demonstration on how popular an MP3 player could be, and how easy it was to copy songs from CDs and share them with friends. There was *no* DRM on the original iPods. Jobs turned around and negotiated the store. He insisted that they sell all music for the same price, that the music wouldn't expire, and that users would have some means of sharing it. In return, Apple created FairPlay which made the record executives a bit less nervious about selling electronically.
Apple also made ITMS "Mac Only" as a demonstration product. This way, the music executives could see how it might actually be good for the industry. Once they were satisfied about the security and sales, they allowed Apple to ship the Windows version of iTunes.
Apple recently again did battle against the record industry. Remember a few months ago that the industry wanted to do away with "one price" pricing? Apple insisted that 1). All music would be the same price, and 2). That it would remain under a dollar.
Does Apple do this because they love us? Nope, it's because Jobs has a clue of what people want, and has a vision how things should be done.
Microsoft will simply try to overload the player with features, then use its Windows monopoly to push it upon the market. All PCs will come with the software, and the service. If you put in a CD, the service will be the default way it will play. The Microsoft designed music players will be unhappy on any machine, but Windows, and will insist upon Windows Vista. They'll come up with the service specs, and will design, but not necessarily produce the system. They will put pressure upon their "business partners" to produce the players, and to bundle them with their PCs. You will get the Microsoft approved device and you will love it.
This is a bit old, but explains why Microsoft couldn't make an iPod: .
But ffpmeg (MPlayer/VLC) work much better. As more folks start using MPlayer/VLC to watch media, there will be less need for the WMV (and QuickTime) proprietary protocols.
So, they can ignore the Macintosh at their own peril.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Apple now has it sewn up due not to iTMS or Fairplay but to that little connector on the bottom. Unless MS has that same little connector, they're fucked. Everyone with that iPod connector in their car, stereo, etc. won't buy in and it'll take ages for the market to come around to MS. Apple surely has a response to MS as well. We know that they've got the subscription service primed if they need to deploy. There's a new generation of iPods coming. There's video build-out still taking place. I just don't see how MS can jump ahead of all of that.
This should go over well with all those companies that hitched their wagon to Microsoft's star and licensed Windows Media DRM 10, then came back for more licensing and test fees for PlaysForSure.
I'l sure they'll all understand that they were really just preparing a market for Microsoft, and will quietly close up shop. Certainly, none of these companies such as Creative Labs has ever shown any tendency to cause trouble or litigate. I'm sure they can all simply rely on the US Justice Department's oversight and Microsoft's honoring the DOJ settlement and consent decree to ensure that Microsoft won't try to extend it's monopoly here.
I'm noticing this a lot lately, but this is one of the most glaring examples. Someone out there has tagged an article in which Microsoft pledges to compete with iTMS as "fud". "FUD" is an acronym that stands for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" and refers to the practice of deliberately spreading misinformation about a competitor's product in order to convince customers that switching would not be beneficial. The character of said misinformation is typically the sort that inpires fear (ie, "Early adopters of the Macintosh experienced extreme losses in productivity, pushing many small business owners into bankruptcy"), uncertainty (ie, "It's not clear that switching to the Macintosh is worth the cost anyway, studies show the Mac is quite expensive and offers no tangible benefits over MS Windows"), and doubt (ie, "Company XYZ failed to lose productivity when they switched to the Mac for some tasks, their representatives said, but they didn't switch all workstations and the ones they did switch were the ones used by effeminate hello-kitty product designers who used them primarily in the design of advertisements directed at the SF Castro district community. The question you need to ask yourself is, does your company fit this particular niche for which Macintoshes are ideally suited?")
Obviously there are probably better examples of FUD (U and D in particular overlap somewhat).
This is rather like the lamentable practice that some losers have of abusing the moderation system to bury posts they disagree with. Troll and Flamebait do not mean I disagree, nor does Overrated. When you disagree with a post or a story, the proper response is to REPLY. Let's face it, the reason we all come to Slashdot is for the comments. The days when Slashdot was the place to get current news are long gone -- there are a host of other sites that post this stuff days earlier, fail to dupe, and care about accuracy more than sensationalism. The reason that I don't read these much (and my guess is that it's the same for 90% of the rest of Slashdot) is because regardless of how many spelling mistakes there are in the story submission here, the comments are filled with lucid and interesting analyses of anything and everything.
I guess what this means is that you have a choice: you can either be a coward and use loaded tags or abuse the Troll/Flaimbait mods to comment, or you can actually post content that will help keep Slashdot interesting and the Slashdot masses informed.
Despite what everyone says about "the hive mind" and "getting modded down for going against the grain", I personally have never experienced this phenomenon. Have you ever noticed that nearly every lucidly written post that goes against established mantras and includes the magic line "I'll probably be modded down for this" makes it to +5? The whiners who go on and on about how "The Slashbots are against me!@@!!11one" usually can't write worth squat and such fail to inspire any reaction other than "You're stupid" from the Moderators. It's true that the reverse is not true, which is sad: some twat who clearly didn't pass elementary school English can write "M$ is the suxor! Lin0x is the win@!!" and get to +5 if he posts early enough, but despite this unfortunate reality the truth of the matter is that you can post wildly unpopular opinions and get modded up if you phrase your ideas in an interesting, informative, and non-flamebait way.
Since I'm going on about not abusing the tagging and moderation system, it's only appropriate that this be modded Offtopic, which it is. Mods, do your worst.
is everyone here so anti-ms as to not notice that competition is GOOD for customers? ipods are EXPENSIVE and so far there is not viable competitor that could force apple to lower their prices. is ms could do that, what's not to like? why is everyone so focused on giving ms grief?
Another iPod killer...Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along
Customer: I made a CD of the songs I bought using the Microsoft Song Service and it won't play in my car.
MS Support: You have to install Windows in your car to play CDs from the Mircrosoft Song Service.
MS Support: Give us your license number so we can make sure your not a thief.
Customer: WTF?
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
AAC is ISO MPEG 4 Advanced Audio Codec
MP3 is ISO MPEG 1 Layer 3
So because Linux can't play AAC, Apple is at fault? If Linux can't play MP3 files, is it also Apple's fault because Apple also provides you the option of encoding in MP3?
And iTunes originally did support multiple hardware because the iPod wasn't released until 2001, and iTunes is at least as old as 1999. Creative's Nomad did indeed work with iTunes, and it may still if it is a mass storage device, but I don't know anyone who has tried since the iPod was released.
GPL Deconstructed
Imagine my lap covered in vomit, and imagine me sending you the cleaning bill.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
Just so long as the Netherlands and France go after their closed source proprietary "plays for sure for the most part sometimes" DRM and ensures that its available to run on any device....
like iPods.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Two years ago Microsoft had their exciting answer. It was some exciting Media Player based store or somesuch and companies could brand their MP3 players as compatible. It was going to be the next big thing that'd replace iTunes and iPod. It flopped.
This year they're releasing a new version of media player with MTV branded store by default. It'll be the next big thing. Well, we're guessing not because they're already planning the next next big thing. Sounds like this incarnation was a flop.
So they have this one planned. It'll be hyped as the next big thing. It'll likely flop and they'll likely work on the next one. And the next one. And the next one.
Who knows, maybe someday they'll eventually stumble on how to get it right. Unlikely though in a genre where being "hip" is important and they the generic big, grey company that your mom uses to do word processing. Of course Walmart isn't "hip" either and yet they virtually control the music industry because they're everywhere and can simply reach more consumers whilst forcing prices lower.
The point being that it's too lucrative a market for Microsoft to just ignore. There'll always be some project or other in Redmond until they either crack it or the end of days comes when the antichrist steps down from day to day operations and starts walking the earth.
Oh.
Shit.
I noticed this as well. The sad thing is that they do get modded up when I would like to oblige them so much and mod them down for being inane or for trolling/pandering for shamelessly karma with that line.
But then, I'll probably get modded down for this.
People complain or at least refer to Steve Jobs' RDF, but the real RDF is the one that Microsoft surrounds itself with. The problem is, they got very, very lucky in a very big way, once, with early versions of Windows. They've cashed in on it ever since. They now think that as a company they have some sort of Midas touch, and that everything they copy will turn to gold. In a way, it does because the public are too stupid to notice that in fact what they do sucks. However, the public is slowly starting to realise that better stuff is out there, and that the way MS do business is really pretty shabby, and that they don't have to accept it. As soon as people start to say 'no' and go with any of the many viable alternatives out there, MS's RDF will collapse around their ears. I for one can't wait to see it happen, and if I'm sure I'll forgiven for a little inward smile of pleasure as it does.
This is just one more example of MS swallowing their own hype. They think they are good at what they do but they're not - they are just aggressive, lucky and unpleasant and that's how they got to be top dog in one area for a short time. It can't and won't last. History shows that hubris rarely lasts long.
What the msPod will look like:a lbum=4&pos=139
= microsoft%20iPod
http://gallery.ilounge.com/ipod/displayimage.php?
A video has also been showing the box design:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0&search
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
The reason you don't see articles that say "I'm probably going tobe modded down" modded down so often is because that's kind of a vaccination against the effect.
But I've seen well-written "against the grain" articles get modded down, and I've modded a few up again.
"Fud" isn't just about talking down your compeditors product, it usually also involves overselling your own future product (i.e. vaporware), thus the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Microsoft continually prattles about how consumers should have more "choice" than Apple's offerings, even though wmv is even more DRM'd and restrictive.