MSN Music

I went and bought some music at the MSN Music Store today.

In case you are interested, it was Lean Back by Terror Squad. My kids love that song and I have to admit, its pretty fun to listen to.

Anway, the experience left me a little empty. First, I had to become a .NET Passport user. That sucks. I am not particularly interested in doing that. Second, there was nothing new at the MSN Music Store that I haven't been getting from iTunes for over a year.

I did like the browser based interface at some level. It feels more open and standard, but also its not integrated with my music player and since I still run Win 2000, I can't get Windows Media Player 10 to work on my laptop.

The worst thing is the music comes down in Microsoft's proprietary WMA format. I bet that means I can't play it on my iPod. No way am I going to get a new portable music player just to use Microsoft's store.

Brian Cooley at ZDNet thinks its just a matter of time before Microsoft wins the digital music store battle. I am not so sure about that.

Comments

[Max Niederhofer]

> I bet that means I can't play it on my iPod.

naah, the first time you add it to itunes, it'll convert it automatically to aac, which isn't much less proprietary, mind you :)

[Toby]

While MS has the resources to play the digital music game at a loss for a long time, I think in the end they'll fail to dominate. Music is a product that really begs for a "cool" image. There is nothing cool about MS. I think you can look at their quite limited success with the X-Box to see how they can fail to make the jump to a non productivity market do to poor overall image and poor product handling. The funny thing about the X-Box is that they had a huge market share of computer games they could leverage and it still didn't get them anywhere. They have no such advantage with music. The only hope they have is to be a generic back end content aggregator and let affiliates and platforms push the music for them. Still though, WMA sucks and I don't think that even the "average joe" is going to buy into it.

[Charlie O'Donnell]

Agreed... MSFT won't win here, either. Apple had huge momentum because they had yet another great consumer product in the Ipod that drove the masses to the site. People have no reason to head to Microsoft to get their stuff.

What I think someone should jump on is to be able to buy music off of satellite radio. I know a lot of people that know they like particular genres, but don't know enough about individual artists or songs to search out a track and buy it. However, when you have genre focused radio streams on XM or Sirius, people like having songs selected for them, and being exposed to songs they might not have heard before in the same genre. Being a big fan of electronica and techno, I find that happening all the time, since a lot of the artists are not big names that I'd remember. If I could hear a song in my car that I liked, push a button to tell Itunes or whoever that I want to buy it, and have it automatically update my Ipod with it the next time I log it, that would be SWEET... kind of like a sattilite "shopping cart."

[Toby]

Charlie -
I think your post points towards the only potential success that MS is going to have (or anyone else in the music biz in the long run). Control the format, offer up a catalog, work deals with platforms (mobile phones, software, consumer audio), and let others build interfaces and mine the catalog for the listeners to help them find things to buy/stream. If MS could get some streaming going on the mobile they may be in a good position with their store. With streaming, no one cares what the format is, and MS could leverage their huge size to pull some pretty good deals with Nokia and such (Nokia is currently doing their own thing directly with the labels, but why bother when you can get a huge catalog handed to you). As far as the mining end goes, I just finished a new recommendation engine on Musicmobs. Check it out here http://www.musicmobs.com/mobsearch.php , the idea is to tie it into platforms like mobiles so you could put in a few band names then listen to a custom stream. If the music ends up coming from the MS store, Apple or OD2 it doesn't really matter to the end listener.

[jackson]

Microsoft will continue to lose these battles because they fail to realize that people don't want two sets of everything, they want to mix and match. Microsoft's relationship to the marketplace is much like the pusher/junkie realtionship, except that very rarely is the first one free.

[jackson]

Microsoft will continue to lose these battles because they fail to realize that people don't want two sets of everything, they want to mix and match. Microsoft's relationship to the marketplace is much like the pusher/junkie realtionship, except that very rarely is the first one free.

[Rajesh]

Quick correction about WMA in Max's comments - iTunes will not convert DRM'd WMA to AAC - it will only convert files that were ripped in WMA format without DRM. I agree about iTunes winning: its multi-platform, really fair about "fair use", so easy to use, and, of course, plays beautifully with my 2 iPods. Daring Fireball has an excellent analysis here on iTunes vs Microsoft: Why 2004 will not be like 1984.

[Jeremy C. Wright]

WMA plays quite happily on Windows, Linux and OS X. How is it Not Cross platform?

WMA is no more proprietary than Apple's Fairplay-AAC. Even the iPod which was designed to be able to play MP3's and WMA's (by the hardware team) has that functionality turned off.

Who will win is anyone's best guess. Personally I'd rather use MSN because I can buy from more countries, I can play it on more devices, and there are a lot more conversion tools (and simpler tools) than for AAC. Add to that the fact that I don't need to download software (which is, to me, far more cumbersome than getting a Passport account) and for me it's an easy choice.

However, for Mac users it won't be that easy and I can't really see how Microsoft could ever hope to lure existing iTunes and iPod users based on the current offering.

[josh]

you might consider downloading the remix featuring Mase...it's the better version in my mind.

[Damian]

>I think you can look at their quite
>limited success with the X-Box to see how
>they can fail to make the jump to a non
>productivity market do to poor overall
>image and poor product handling.

X-Box was version 1.0 of a battle that will rage for the next 5 years at least. Sony is now looking very vulnerable and moving 8 million boxes is nothing to sneeze at. They came into a market late and will have to pay to play - but it's hardly a failure.

>Microsoft will continue to lose these
>battles because they fail to realize that
>people don't want two sets of everything,
>they want to mix and match.

Maybe I'm not understanding this comment - but people don't want two sets of everything or to mix and match - that's what the iPod/iTunes showed: that an integrated, easy to use system was one of the major keys to getting people to buy. Add the Apple cool factor and there you go.

As for the music biz - some comments.

Microsoft doesn't care if it wins or not. The goal isn't to sell music, it's to sell the MS OS (and DRM products by extension) anywhere it can. I once talked to a Visual Basic product manager, back in the day, about whether they could compete with the encombent Delphi - his response was enlightening: VB could disappear from Microsoft's revenue stream and not make a ripple. It's not about the money - it's about making sure people develop for Windows.

I think they're using the same philosophy about music. Apple's strategy is to use the online music system to sell hardware (typical Apple thinking). I think the thing people forget is that Apple's music business, minus hardware, is a pretty terrible business with basically no margins.

The only way to make it work is to own the content and I don't see either Microsoft or Apple going out and buying a content company, Steve Job's involvement in Pixar not withstanding. Apple could potentially become their own label, but they then risk alienating the rest of the music by compromising their position as distributor.

iPod will be difficult to defeat until pricing starts coming down. Apple's margin on hardware and cool factor work for the high-end/mid-end of the market, but what happens to that business when someone finally sticks a hard drive in a phone? Apple might see some software licensing revenue, but if you think that MS is tough, wait till they have to negotiate with the mobile companies. What happens when some company doesn't match the incredible beauty of the iPod, but comes out with it for $99? Or $50? That is when it gets tough for Apple.

All the while, MS will be trying to get it's mobile OS and PMC OS into more and more devices...so as that happens, assuming the labels want some form of DRM to play and AAC and Windows Media are the only two real games in town (maybe Real), the MS license revenue will increase - that's their game.

Personally, I don't understand why anyone would buy music from either system. Yes, the integration is nice, but you're paying essentially the same amount of money to have less digital rights. I'll take the CD everytime and control the rights to the music I bought under fair use.

[Max Niederhofer]

> Quick correction about WMA in Max's comments - iTunes will not convert DRM'd WMA to AAC

Well, call me crazy but mine DOES :)

[hey]

apple will lose

apple always loses

they will lose for the same reason they always doe (and the same reason that they initially win)

Steve, his engineers, and the idea of "insanely great"

This company does not do incremental innovation. This company does not execute. This company does not do what most people think it should, because it is too engineering/product/ideologically focused rather than customer focused. This company is all about tactics.

Microsoft will win, because they are everything that Apple is not. Most of all, because they are all about strategy, and because they have the cash to tough it out until the world catches up to their strategy. Secondly (perhaps primarily) Microsoft will win because they do create an ecosystem, despite their rapacity. Apple creates very few niches (since they are niche themselves) and no ecosystem, no one has a vested interest in Apple surviving or thriving except its rabid customers (and MS when confronted by Dem AGs).

[Steerpike]

According to Apple's own information, they cannot copy DRM'd WMAs to AAC; they can convert non-DRM'd WMAs to AAC.

According to MSN Music's online help, the workaround is to use MS Media Player to burn the DRM'd WMA to a CD, then use standard i-tunes features to 'rip' the CD to AAC (I-tunes format).

This suggests to me that MS Media Player is providing a pretty simple 'hole' in their DRM strategy, by allowing you to convert the DRM'd WMA to a conventional CD, which is inherently not copy protected.

If some posters here are finding that they can copy a DRM'd WMA directly to AAC, that's great - but it's not what apple or MS say you can do!

As for 'who will win' - I personally prefer the MSN Music site, and don't care for the dominance of the i-pod, BUT - what's going to drive me to the i-pod is hardware accessory integration ... I can get an i-pod car interface for my 12 year old acura - let's me control the ipod using my steering-wheel sound system controls, etc - and I can buy dozens of 'docking stations' for the i-pod. What are the chances of doing that with an i-river or creative zen player?