MSN Music Purchases Not Compatible with Zune

lewiz writes "The BBC is reporting that music purchased at MSN Music will not play on the new Zune music player." From the article: "The problem has arisen because tracks from the MSN Music site are compatible with the specifications of the Plays For Sure initiative. This was intended to re-assure consumers as it guaranteed that music bought from services backing it would work with players that supported it. MSN Music, Napster, AOL Music Now and Urge all backed Plays For Sure as did many players from hardware makers such as Archos, Creative, Dell and Iriver. In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: 'Since Zune is a separate offering that is not part of the Plays For Sure ecosystem, Zune content is not supported on Plays For Sure devices.'"

Comments

Not a good customer retention idea...

[Callaway]

One would think Microsoft would do their best to retain their customer base from MSN Music.

Yes, DRM is inherently evil

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep saying DRM isn't inherently evil. Why?

Over the past week, I've heard a number of people claim that there's nothing inherently evil about DRM: that it's just a neutral tool, and you can do good or evil things with it. I'm always a little surprised to hear this. After all, the media cartel calls it "Digital Rights Management;" that kind of Orwellian doublespeak makes it hard to think positive thoughts about it.

The point of DRM is to keep someone from making full use of some data they have, and I can't imagine what's good about that. It's certainly bad when it keeps me from putting my music on all my devices. It's bad when it keeps me from recording the TV shows I watch, too. And even when it has potential security applications, I think it's bad. Sure, a company could use DRM-like technology to keep its internal correspondence away from competitors and journalists. But do we want to live in a society where the New York Times can't get a copy of the Pentagon Papers?

If DRM isn't inherently evil, it certainly doesn't have anything going for it.

Re:Yes, DRM is inherently evil

[Secrity]

"The drawbacks of its implementation may include preventing a legitimate licensee from playing the audio or video files on his/her various devices, but that is most definitely not the original intent."

It might be possible that it wasn't the original intent of content providers to use DRM to force users to buy multiple copies of the same material in order to use it on multiple devices, but I am sure that they now consider it to be a dandy feature; a feature that they don't want to lose.

Re:Yes, DRM is inherently evil

[Baricom]

The problem is that many people fail to see that locking WMA files to Microsoft Plays For Sure devices is essentially no different than locking your DVD purchases to a DVD player.

First of all, DVDs aren't locked to a specific DVD player - DRM-infected media is. Beyond that subtle point, I agree with you - that's why I don't buy encrypted DVDs.

So, classified government documents are inherently evil, too?

No, but the privilege of keeping documents secret is abused far too often. I would argue it's abused more often than it's used correctly. Of course, because I don't get to see what's classified, I can't know this for sure.

If you want to own a copy of someone else's intellectual property

Hold on there. The property belongs to the public; we're just renting it to the creators for a limited amount of time to reward them for benefitting the public good.

The intellectual property isn't anything you have a human right to

The Constitution of the United States would seem to disagree with you. It may not be a human right, but it's a granted right nonetheless.

if you don't like the restritions, don't make the purchase. It's that simple.

It's not that simple. The movie in the movie theater, the music on the CD, and the software in my computer? I own it, along with my neighbors. By intentionally making it hard to use, the media companies are stealing my property from me. It's no different than if I borrowed your car and forgot to return it for your entire lifetime.

The rich media companies would like you to believe that they are hounded by criminals every day, but that's simply not the case. They are the guilty party.

And no, I'm not a troll.

Re:I can only say...

[WilliamSChips]

You won't because iTunes is the easiest to break. You just have to burn it onto a CD.

In the foot.

[X-treme-LLama]

Way to go Microsoft. You took the gun, loaded it, aimed it squarely at Apple and the iPod, and then turned it around and shot yourself in the foot.

I'm not an MS basher any more than saying I don't like most of their software. I don't think they're utterly evil... But wow, that takes a special commitment to poor business decisions. Launch an system called "plays for sure" and then manufacture a incompatible product. I'm impressed.

What's sad is that they'll still probably sell a few to people who can't see passed the advertising and MS hype.

Microsoft IS the new IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the kind of crap that made IBM so hated in the old days. They would partner with some (usually much smaller) partner and offer a joint product. The partner would be a specialist in an area where IBM didn't have an offering. Then, after a few years IBM would drop the partner come out with their own competing product. Often they would get sued, and sometimes they would loose, but the partner would amost always be knocked out, and if they didn't go out of business, they never got over it.

The only real question is if Microsoft will ever go through the kind of change that IBM did, and stop being such a bad business player.

Will it run linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I'm not the type of person to ask this question. But the Zune looks like some really interesting hardware that just isn't being used right, especially with regard to its wireless capability. Is there any chance to get linux on this thing so I can just do whatever I want with it, or is DRM implemented in hardware?

Re:"unauthorized" not "illegal"

[rm999]

""legal" or "illegal" has nothing to do with DRM."

Not true in the USA. If you attempt to get around it and you live in the USA you are likely breaking the law.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Co pyright_Act

"DRM does not suddenly unlock with the material is public domain or the copyright is expired or the use is a "fair use"."

Very good point - in theory. But when the copyright expires, people will likely be using an entirely different technology. For example, music that is coming out of copyright now is on fairly primitive medium. If you want a chance in hell of hearing anything from then, it will be playing on a different technology than was common back then. And besides, 75 years from now most DRM today will seem like a joke to crack (and it will be legal then to crack). I agree with you, but your reasoning is only convincing to me in the theoretical sense.

Typical MS arrogance...

[Junta]

They used to at least work at dominating new markets, and used to succeeding, they've stopped trying and just expect markets to roll over for them now...

Here they obviously have decided that the Zune will be the killer player and they don't need their former partners because "they're microsoft". They screw over existing customers and partners, to bring forth a product that may or may not be adequate (the iPod is sure as hell adequate by the market behavior), all the while not even bothering to undercut their competition in price. Considering that the iPod has, to use their terminology an 'ecosystem' of OEM support (perhaps most notable umpteen different car stereos that can take an iPod and interface intelligently with it). Consumer wise their strategy seems to be fairly boneheaded and assumes success.

Another good example of late is their HPC move 'Compute Cluster Edition'. Here they are trying to enter a market absolutely dominated by linux. Linux proves invaluable to HPC configurations because of the sheer flexibility and power of the system, with either home-grown support with absolute zero licensing fees, or working with vendors that get their licensing fees, but don't enforce things in a draconian fashion. Now an associate of mine has their 'solution' demoed and was expecting that it would work okay, but probably miss some of the point, but it worked like crap on what it did do on top of *completely* missing the point, with the MS person just shrugged and said "it's our initial release, we will improve." I fully expected they would have done better, and also expected that they would recognize the competitive landscape and aggressively price. I didn't expect them to give it away, but their per-node licensing exceeds even the 'entry server' licenses of RH and Novell, and experience teaches that commonly clusters go no higher than the 'workstation' pricing for nodes.

MS has turned into a company expecting success to fall into their laps, and I hope this complacency will bite them in the ass.

Huge Screw Up.

[twitter]

I don't know about you, but if I had just been screwed like this I wouldn't pick the Microsoft option...

I can imagine that most people won't pick the M$ option if they do so much as hear about "Plays for Sure", which is practically unavoidable if you bought anything but an iPod. The majority of MP3 player owners did just that in the past, but M$ seems determined to change things in the future. WMP is a steaming pile of dog poop, their players don't let you buy an keep music online, what more can they do to make themselves and DRM look bad?

Re:I can only say...

[Firehed]

So then use one of the several DRM-stripping utilities. Or take comfort in the fact that if they modify their license in such a way and it retroactively effects your previous purchases in a negative way, you can almost certainly take them to court over it (despite what may or may not be in the EULA; I wouldn't know if it contains a clause about that, not being able to read legalese nor caring enough to find out).

I'm not saying you're wrong here, but it's not the world's most difficult problem to solve.

Re:They want to be apple

[Golias]

If people want a player locked into one store, they will get an ipod

That must be what they want, then. Because people are still mostly buying iPods. They are not just out-selling all the other players. They are outselling all the other players combined.

Why? I couldn't speak for others, but I know why I bought one.

1. The user interface is simply better. It's not even a vaguely subjective thing. It's better. I've yet to meet anybody face-to-face who honestly believes otherwise.

2. iTunes is a darn good media player on my computer, and the iPod works with it seamlessly.

3. They finally fixed that damned gapless playback issue.

4. Though I prefer buying CD's and ripping them as lossless files, iTMS is kind of spiffy for one-hit-wonder pop tracks.

5. It's easy to get peripherals for it. I have a car charger which doubles as a cradle and triples as a very good FM transmitter. My iPod + the Ford stock stereo makes the perfect "pull-out" audio system for my dashboard. I just take the whole iPod with me when I park, leaving my El-Cheapo radio and a strange-looking plastic stand in the car. It was the best of several just like it from different manufacturers. With no other portable music player do I have half as many options for gizmos like that.

6. My 80GB iPod plus my RAZR together take up less space than my first cell phone did by itself.

Re:Embrace and extend comming soon

[jaq1an]

Yeah way better than the pod peoples players. A 4.3inch screen to check out your photos, watch movies, read text files, listen to the radio or play music encoded in mp3, ogg, flac or wav. No crappy bloated iTunes or like software needed its just drag and drop baby. Plus it runs on Linux!!! If you like proprietry formats and being locked in go buy a Zune or iPod. Me I'll stick with my A2.

Re:No Way!

[dwandy]

In general, history doesn't agree with you:
Apple failed to open the Mac and has managed to keep 100% of 5% of the market, down from ~50% at peak. Contrast with the very open Intel x86 standard. (not just the chip, the whole architecture has competition)
Sony has introduced countless (now) irrelevent proprietary media types all of which either failed to ever get traction or started with a bang, but dropped off until they disappeared. Contrast with the very open CD media standard, and even the very licensable DVD standard, and the semi-open MP3 standard. ...leaving Sony with 100% of 0% of the market.

So basically, over time, the market tends to reward the most open standards, and relegate the most closed standards to the history books. Various levels of open survive for different terms, and various outside factors play into specific examples, but in general the most unencumbered standards tend to win.

The company that makes and publishes an open standard (read: the next 'CD', like Phillips did) will topple Apple, and will make a %age of the profits, while Apple's share will drop.

...probably the biggest obstacle in this however, is the music biz itself with it's retarded managment that can't do math or understand that DRM can't ever work -- and they just *might* be the outside factor that causes your analysis to be true afterall. We'll see!

Re:No Way!

[SenseiLeNoir]

I agree.

My MP3 player is actually my Motorola RAZR V3i Mobile phone. I got it on contract for £0, to which I added a pair headphones (£12) plus a 1g Micro SD card (£28), for a total of £40. Its a certainly capable phone, with class 1 bluetooth which pairs well with my car bluetooth handsfree, and email capabilities. Its small enough, and has Drag and Drop MP3 playback - It has a standard Mini USB port, and can be set to appear as a USB mass storage device with no need for drivers, under Windows Linux, and MAC. It charges up when connected to USB. Its MP3 playback is of very good quality, though a little quieter than some players. Only drawback is it doesn't handle VBR files, though there is a firmware update in the works to fix that. As far as i know, there is NO capabilities to play DRM files.

Although there is an iTunes version of the phone, I didn't bother getting that, as Apple put a limitation of either 50 or 100 songs only can be transfered via the iTunes interface. The iTunes version still supports normal MP3 via drag and drop, with no limitations.

When I am also carrying my iPaq, I just take the transflash card out, and slot it into my iPaq via an SD adapter, and I get the same tunes on my iPaq (and I can place VBR files in a separate directory, which the iPaq CAN handle)

I believe the SonyEricsson Walkman line of phones also support Drag And Drop MP3 (my old S700 certainly did). They have DRM available, but its not mandatory.

Considering the heavy promotion of mobile phones here in the UK with MP3 capabilities, I wonder sometimes, if iPod/iTunes may be defeated this way (the SonyEricsson line, and the V3i was very popular, as well as Symbian Nokia, and Ericsson phones)

I'm sure Microsoft will compensate both customers

[Joce640k]

I'm sure Microsoft will compensate both customers adequetely.

Seriously, is there a single person in the world who doesn't shrivel with revulsion when they see the letters "MSN"?

Either that or the years and years of ignoring/closing windows with "MSN" at the top will have created a subconscious filter to block it out.