I have a new idea for a service!

dell, napster, coca-cola, wal-mart, frickin' red cross will have one soon. it's pathetic. clearly, when the dark side realized that apple would win this war, they decided to so heavily flood the market with music stores as to diminish each one, forcing the record labels to yank contracts. i think they're trying to ruin the market entirely, just to keep apple from dominating it.

it will not work. iTMS could survive on current users alone, and obviously people that use it aren't going anywhere. that number can only go up. Apple has won.

paul

It's not about trying to kill off iTMS. It's simply the old story - when someone does something successful everyone wants a cut so make their own copies.

I mean...how many conventional music stores are there in the world??!!!

So why can't there also be a gazillion online music stores?

Mark my words.
At the end, Microsoft will have 95% of the market.
They will provide a crappy service for a low prive.

Originally posted by gerror
Mark my words.
At the end, Microsoft will have 95% of the market.
They will provide a crappy service for a low prive.

Click to expand...

Sadly I have to agree. Next year, when you run Windows Update on your XP Pro/Home you will have a falsed update to WMP 9, this will be the Microsoft supa-dupa-delux-muzik-shop. When logging on to Windows it will open itself automatically, and there will be no way of stopping it (unless you know where to look in regedit ). Of course, because of the huge market share on Windows, they will come out with the largest market share in digital music distribution. Sad but true folks.

gerror and edesignuk.

I disagree with you. With the HW vendors also being in the market (eg Dell, HP etc) MS will face very very stiff competition.

They've never had that type of competition before. In the past they've always gone head-to-head with competitors. The Music Store business will but them head-to-head with their most important allies.

If you were Dell and HP, would you provide a product that was going to give marketshare from one of your other products to a competitor?

If you were Dell and HP, wouldn't you build in automatic linking and access to your music store? Just as Apple do.

Also, MS would need to be very careful on the monopolization issue. The DOJ couldn't ignore the type of blatant abuse of their dominance in one field to totally dominate another that you propose.

What you proposing would be no different to the next version of Windows only working with MS mice and keyboards. It won't ever happen because of that competition issue. So MS would try to get around it by having features no else does (like they did with the scrollwheel) but they'd soon be copied
(like happened with the scrollwheel)

But....

The greater likelihood is that 95% of all downloaded music will be a MS format (eg what ever WMP uses) and that MS will have found some way to earn a cut from every song downloaded in their format.

They will find a way to make it a lot chaeper, although it will not work well. They've got the money to sell it under the costprice, just like they do with the XBox.
It is just I'm not a negative person, it is just the feeling I have.
As soon Microsoft enters a market, they will dominate it. Please give me examples where they failed. I wanna have hope ;-)

Originally posted by gerror
As soon Microsoft enters a market, they will dominate it. Please give me examples where they failed. I wanna have hope ;-)

Click to expand...

You mentioned one, the xbox. While it may not be a complete failure, it is certainly NOT dominating the market.

Hickman

What about instant messaging, webmail.
Ik worked in a 600 seats internetcafe and most people were using hotmail and msn :-(

doom and gloom

Originally posted by gerror
Mark my words.
At the end, Microsoft will have 95% of the market.
They will provide a crappy service for a low price.

Click to expand...

That's the badger!

In my darkest hour, in my our of need, yes I see this too. Hopefully, the bubble created by lack of quality in all these great global sales strategies will fail to find enough losers to feed the winners. We have to stop consuming things that fail to deliver a fair level of usefulness.
If that can be measured.
Mind you the average P.C. user soesn't want to know that there might be an alternative to Windoze, They're happy to be in the 95% suffering the same "normal" hell. They don't want to understand that they might be being ripped off. yes, arguably to a greater extent than any other commercial computing system.

gerror

i search Google. This article might make you feel more optimistic

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0330/news-microsoft.php

For those who don't read it, here's some of the MS failures it lists

- 1993: MS Home (specialist Home user apps - eg Fine Artist)
- 1997: ActiMates interactive plush toys
- "Microsoft at Work" (an effort to embed Windows in office machines - eg copiers)
- Smart mobile phones
- Interactive television

Alos I'd add that MS has been a dismal failure at killing off or taking over Java.

One of the key statements in this article is:

There seems to be a common reason for Microsoft's missteps in TV and telephones: a lack of understanding of how non-PC businesses work and a desire to impose Microsoft's vision upon both.

Click to expand...

This is why iTMS has worked so well. Apple obviously understand both the consumer and the music industry's needs.

A lot of the iTMS "copies" you can tell, really have no idea. MS also risk that.

Mind you the average P.C. user soesn't want to know that there might be an alternative to Windoze, They're happy to be in the 95% suffering the same "normal" hell.

Click to expand...

Correct. I had a discussion saturdayevening on a birtday party with a guy. He did not know Apple was the first who came with a gui computer on the market.
But he did not care and why should he?
If you don't know what you're missing, you don't miss it
Ignorance is a blessing.

ChrisH3677, Thank you for giving me some hope

I really hope the music store will work out. Apple pays so much more attention to the user. And is the only company I wish they make lots of money from me

gerror, another thought i just had that may give you hope, Microsoft have zero retail experience (as far as i can remember).

They have never sold direct to the consumer. They never had a"Microsoft Store" or even online sales.

So now they want to get into retail - and not their own product either. someone elses. now they will find out what it's like to have terms dictated to them as any and every retailer has experience (esp pc retailers being forced to install windows).

It will be very interesting to see how they cope with the shoe on the other foot.

The more I think about it, the more i think they're only doing this to try to entrench their own format (WMP) as the industry standard.

The more I think about it, the more i think they're only doing this to try to entrench their own format (WMP) as the industry standard.

Click to expand...

And we all know the quality of WMP