Microsoft: rival to iTunes?

[Brian Turner]

Microsoft has launched a music-downloading service in the US to rival Apple's iTunes and other providers.

The software giant has released a preview version of MSN Music, which allows users legally to download songs for 99 cents (£0.55) each.

Whole albums will be available for $9.99. About 500,000 songs will be initially available, with more added on a weekly basis, Microsoft said.

It did not say when the service would be available outside the US.

Apple's iTunes is already available outside the US, competing with providers such as Napster.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620182.stm

Heh, after the compatability problems with XP and SP2, how on earth then Microsoft expect to continue to earn the trust of a computer-using base that is becoming much more savvy to the flaws of Microsoft?

[bumfluff]

If MS go ahead, I reckon they're gonna tie it into the whole DRM (Digital Rights Management) thing that they were pushing. If so, it'll never take off unless its dirt cheap. P2P is free, whatever your ethical stance on it is, and also, looking at some of the pricing other places have for downloading music, its not that much cheaper than CD, and they're often secure formats. Last time I checked, new popular songs were around 99p to download. Lets say 10 songs on an album (I know not everyone will like all the songs on an album), thats £9.90. Considering the distribution costs are negligible, thats a ripoff. F*cked if I'm playing close to a tenner for songs in a format where I can only copy it a limited number of times, I might as well just buy the CD. A lot of people are just going to stick to getting songs off P2P networks.

[Brian Turner]

I completely agree - the CD makes much more sense. And if it's a bit of an oldie, it'll be a lot cheaper, too.

And forget the bitrate as a measure of quality, too - mp3 files in themselves are much reduced quality on original WAV file recordings. I will never pay CD quality prices for sub-quality recordings.

The whole idea if a bit of a joke, really.