MSN Music to compete against iTunes

3 September 2004, 12:52 am ISTFiled under: Microsoft, Music

Microsoft's MSN Music (currently in beta) will compete with the Apple's iTunes store.

At first glance site seems to be slick (enough) to compete with iTunes atleast in presentation. Pricing for a song and album also seems to be equivalent to iTunes.

The surprise is that Microsoft has been a bit generous in terms of rights ... "MSN Music allows you to play your music on up to five Windows PCs, burn play lists to CD up to seven times, and transfer to an unlimited number of portable audio devices."

Microsoft seems to getting ready for opening another front in its domainance, but a crucial piece the Windows Media Player 10 is still in beta and is expected to be released shortly. (If you believe some rumors, within this week)

If you look beneath the surface and analyse the situation, the online music business has margins of few pennies (or less) per song. Then why is Microsoft doing this ? A well calculated guess is that wants to ward of the influence of iPod and iTunes on the windows community. Apple has made an indirect dent into the windows community with the iPod+iTunes combination. And this is what worries Microsoft. If had it been left unchecked, it would have became very dangerous for its core business of providing OS and Office suites, which is already facing a stiff competition from the Linux and its variants like Linspire (formely Lindows) and OpenOffice, StarOffice.

Another goal that Mircrosft would achieve from this is that, it would be strengthen its foundation in the digital content creation and distribution. Its previous attempt at digital content creation (with digital rights management) in the form of eBook Reader was lukewarm. Gaining valuable experience from the MSN music, the natual direction would be extend the store for more digital content namely Video and integrate its other efforts with it. And Windows Media Player would be used more than just a player view trailers off the web and old video CDs, but a true Media player.

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Amit Arora is web developer with expertise in developing eCommerce enabled websites for the businesses.

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