Microsoft Music Store?

[chubakka]

DO we think the others will do it better...

I don't think they'll do it better... and how many will even bother doing it for the Mac?

Mac users have a music store they can use seamlessly with their iPod and iTunes. Is there really any competition for us? Didn't think so.

I don't think the iTMS is that strong of a switcher vehicle. It's great for us but it's not that big of a deal to people who aren't into music or perfectly happy waiting for Microshaft to come out with their own crappy rip-off.

I don't think any of this will affect mac users much. Unless M$ starts trying to get exclusive deals with labels and artists and you won't be able to get some sellouts on the iTMS.

 

[maradong]

well it seems like that has happened what i already saw arriving at the beginning. the itms, not able to spread fast enough over all the platforms, will now be overtaken by ms mstore... Consumers will take the first ms aviable, they will not switch in the middle of their buying to apple, once they release the itunes version for windows. looks like the itunes music store dream is over. welcome back in the real m$ an propretary world.

 

[CheekyGit]

MS Music Store = Security Vulnerabilities

I, for one, won't be using the "Microsoft Music Store" because I don't want my credit card number being sent to every hackers in the world on behalf of .Net's security (now there's an oxymoron).

CheekGit

 

[mymemory]

The real problem is...

M$ doesn't really care about selling songs, they care about the creation of iTunes for PCs, a software that would be so practical that will make in a short term a lot of people to switch, THAT is M$ desperation.

BTW, you can bet that in the M$ version of iTUnes you will find pop-ups windows every where. I think the information iTunes offers is enough, more than that is juts contamination.

 

[D*I*S_Frontman]

Not to worry

I think we need not worry about this for a number of reasons:

1) Apple did a good job all around in the design and implementation of their service. The quality of the downloads is consistently high and the interface has typically Apple user-friendliness. M$ will have a hard time faking that, and they can only steal so much without being draged back into court yet again.

2) Look at the iPod. There are hundreds of mp3 players out there, but the iPod rules due to its high design and quality standards. Building cheaper but inferior units has not helped the competition diminish iPod sales. So it will most likely be with the competing music stores. People are picky about their music--quality, usability, copying permissions, etc--and Apple's solutions to online music purchasing are brilliant, preserving the rights of the copyright holders and consumers alike.

3) If Apple can get a windows version of iTunes out by, say, September of this year, they will be in great shape for selling Windows iPods for Christmas. It is always nice to have the Windows world financing Apple Computer's hardware and OS R&D! Couple that with 970-based Powermacs (& PowerBooks?), and this holiday season shoud be a ball-crushing grand slam home run for Apple. Time to buy Apple stock, if the rumors are to be believed.

4) Finally, so what if competition comes forth? Apple will still make a lot of money from this ITMS venture and it will likely be the service more discriminating music listeners choose. You need a couple of terrible copycats out there to highlight the excellence of ITMS by comparison.

 

[RHutch]

Isn't M$ going to use subscriptions?

There is one other thing that should work against M$'s efforts at an online music store: subscriptions. I'm almost certain that there was a story here a couple weeks back about how M$ planned to have a subscription-based service, where if you stopped paying, all of your music was lost. I really can't see people wanting to pay for music and then not get to keep it.

 

[MorganX]

Re: Re: Re: Re: What's all the shouting about?

Originally posted by RHutch
If Apple's store and ideas have nothing to do with the new services being contemplated, why did everyone wait until Apple showed how it could be successful before trying it themselves? You didn't hear a bunch of talk about everyone opening online music stores at once before Apple did.

You didn't hear about it because you're a Mac user. The reason there's buzz now is because Jobs' got record companies to relax their licensing restrictions.

For that I give him credit. Whether or not they will remain relaxed when you start selling to the remaining 97% of users remains to be seen.

 

[MorganX]

Re: Re: Re: What's all the shouting about?

Originally posted by weev
Having Microsoft mp3's of a couple of labels won't be better than the big 5 and a swag of indies on iTunes for Windows, and there is the copy-protection issues as well, which M$ will no doubt make a botch.

The music stores using DRM already have agreements with all the labels and have larger music libraries than iTMS.

There is nothing particularly innovative about iTMS, what is evolutionary is the relaxed licensing and the integration (only with iPod though)

 

[RHutch]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What's all the shouting about?

Originally posted by MorganX
You didn't hear about it because you're a Mac user. The reason there's buzz now is because Jobs' got record companies to relax their licensing restrictions.

For that I give him credit. Whether or not they will remain relaxed when you start selling to the remaining 97% of users remains to be seen.

But why am I hearing about all of it now? I am still a Mac user. It seems that a lot of news is flying around about companies wanting to get involved in online music services, now that Apple has shown how to make it work. Are you really trying to say that all of this stuff was being talked about before-AOL, Amazon, MTV, and M$ online music services? So everyone has had their service in the works for months now, and I am just hearing about them now because I'm a Mac user and somehow missed out on these things because I only pay attention to what is going on in the Mac world? Your claim is weak, at best.

 

[Wonder Boy]

Originally posted by ozubahn
Hmm, interesting. If Microsoft follows its usual business models, it will probably sell the broken tracks from Kazaa, with pops, fadeouts, and cutoffs, then gradually fix them with a series of patches. Can't wait.

The thing is, M$ will put out crap but everyone will still use it. The simplicity of Apple is really no match for the simplicity of keeping your inexpensive dell box and struggling through with it. Sad, really...

 

[macmax]

Originally posted by Iceman06
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo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i feel the same

 

[MorganX]

Originally posted by maradong
well it seems like that has happened what i already saw arriving at the beginning. the itms, not able to spread fast enough over all the platforms, will now be overtaken by ms mstore... Consumers will take the first ms aviable, they will not switch in the middle of their buying to apple, once they release the itunes version for windows. looks like the itunes music store dream is over. welcome back in the real m$ an propretary world.

The music store isn't going to make any meaningful number of users switch anyway. There are million of MP3 players that iTunes does not and probably never will support. New miniature 1GB hard disks will bring even smaller MP3 players that are popular with PC users.

The iTMS isn't over. The dream apparently wasn't to be "the" jukebox and music store for everyone. If it was, Apple wouldn't be so late with a Windows version. It's an afterthought that may be too late. It will still be a great product, if only for Mac. And it's not over yet. But even if it is released for Windows, it will only have limited success if it is iPod only, and doesn't have CD burning features.

Furthermore, if MS can't get the same licensing deals from record companies that Apple has gotten for it's much smaller market, there's no telling what might happen. It's really not about the store, and store is a store is a store. It's about the cost of the music, and the licensing. And I haven't heard anything about MS loosening their DRM.

 

[MorganX]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo more flooding. Thanks.

 

[robotrenegade]

Sorry guys but the fun is over. Apple has always been first but never stayed on top. I'm in a bad mood now. **** YOU MICROSOFT!

 

[MorganX]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What's all the shouting about?

Originally posted by RHutch
Are you really trying to say that all of this stuff was being talked about before-AOL, Amazon, MTV, and M$ online music services? So everyone has had their service in the works for months now, and I am just hearing about them now because I'm a Mac user and somehow missed out on these things because I only pay attention to what is going on in the Mac world?

Of course. Where have you been? Every heard of Pressplay.com? (edit: or Listen.com?) You are hearing about it now, because you're a Mac user and Apple is doing it now. The big news is Apple's licensing and limited DRM. That's what the noise is all about. Strict DRM has limited music services. With Apple getting execs to go for limited DRM, the floodgates are open.

 

[MorganX]

Re: Re: Re: Runs on Xbox

Originally posted by wilhelmd
I seriously don't think that many people use their Xbox as a music library - and I don't even dare to compare it to the iPod.

They haven't thus far. But hey might with the release of Music Mixer for Xbox. I wouldn't compare it to the iPod, I would compare it to a PC in the living room running iTunes or Media player.

I would like to see an iPod kit for the Xbox that could access the iTMS and sync with iPod. Preferable to whatever MS will offer.

 

[MorganX]

Re: Re: Re: Runs on Xbox

Originally posted by wilhelmd
Imagine trying to find just the song you want in a 200.000-song library with your game console remote.

It's all in the software, as any iTunes user should know What more do you need than up, down, left, right, select, back?

 

[VIREBEL661]

Typical M$... Wait for Apple to work out the kinks first - then they'll claim they invented it and every PC weenie out their will believe it.... Just another technology stolen from Apple...

 

[MorganX]

Originally posted by snahabed
I'd be putting hardcore resources on this. Even pulling away from Panther and 970

I wouldn't go that far. iTMS isn't goign to make or break Apple. The next generation of OS and hardware could.

As long as the other stores are subscription based with heavy DRM, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

[MorganX]

Originally posted by VIREBEL661
Just another technology stolen from Apple...

What technology is being stolen from Apple, in regards to music stores?

 

[e-coli]

The Microsoft Music Store will more than likely be encoded with Windows Media player files, and as we all know, that player / compression sucks. Plus it will be subject to Microsoft's Palladium DRM (plus whatever DRM they add into the music).

I wouldn't worry.

 

[pkradd]

M$ will have the same constraints in getting their music store to go internationally. Artist contracts and albums released on sometimes different labels for different territories continue to hold up offerings outside North America. Apple's 1 touch ordering system is owned by Amazon. They licensed it from them. Other patents claimed by Apple don't restrain other versions of music stores being developed.

 

[springscansing]

Re: Re: Re: Runs on Xbox

Originally posted by wilhelmd
Imagine trying to find just the song you want in a 200.000-song library with your game console remote. If done properly, it might work, but when did Microsoft do anything properly?

I seriously don't think that many people use their Xbox as a music library - and I don't even dare to compare it to the iPod.

Yeah, what the hell do you do with songs on an xbox?

 

[RHutch]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What's all the shouting about?

Originally posted by MorganX
Of course. Where have you been? Every heard of Pressplay.com? (edit: or Listen.com?) You are hearing about it now, because you're a Mac user and Apple is doing it now. The big news is Apple's licensing and limited DRM. That's what the noise is all about. Strict DRM has limited music services. With Apple getting execs to go for limited DRM, the floodgates are open.

You really are missing the point, aren't you?! Pressplay.com and Listen.com. Yep. Heard about them. Isn't that all they do? Are they major tech/entertainment companies like Apple, M$, AOL, Amazon, MTV? Companies that most people know? Please tell me that you can see the difference between Pressplay/Listen and these other companies. Yes, there have been attempts at online music services. But have they been by such large companies? No. But now there are several major companies who are going to attempt this or are at least interested in it.

Why now? Because Apple did it and showed that it could work.

 

[VIREBEL661]

Originally posted by MorganX
What technology is being stolen from Apple, in regards to music stores?

Why don't you tell me? I KNOW you're dying to....