Microsoft to join the digital music scrum:
- A spokeswoman for the Redmond, Wash., software company confirmed that Microsoft's MSN Web site will offer such a service in 2004, but declined to provide further details. Microsoft executives previously have said the company was considering selling music online; the company's latest comments represent the most concrete statement yet of its intentions. A person familiar with the matter says Microsoft has been in regular contact with major music companies to discuss plans for a service.
Microsoft is in the process of hiring key personnel for its music site. A job listing posted on the Microsoft corporate Web site last week advertised an opening for a senior-level marketing position for the service. [Dow Jones]
- The plans also represent a change in direction that has left some of Microsoft's own customers feeling betrayed. When Apple's store launched last year, Microsoft publicly stated it had no plans to compete directly, preferring instead to let other stores use Microsoft technology for their own efforts.
But those assurances changed over the course of the last few months, rivals said.
"They called up and said they were going to do it themselves, but the person on the phone said, 'You know us, it's going to take us more than a year to get it up,'" said one executive at a rival music service, asking not to be named. "It was a bad news, good news kind of thing."
....While Microsoft tries to soothe customers' bitterness over its store plans, it also will have to negotiate a tricky legal landscape. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are already asking hard questions about the software giant's music plans and will certainly watch closely to see how tightly the company links the store to its Windows operating system and the Windows Media application.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer does a handy review of the existing services:
- BuyMusic.com
Tech specs: for Windows XP
Cost: Burn directly to CD or download to hard drive, at between 79 cents and $1.14 per track. Can only burn or download the same track five times within the same playlist. Some labels allow copying a track to only three portable devices. Can stream a free 30-second sample of most tracks.
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