In one of my previous stories I told you about the possibility of Microsoft taking over the theme park industry, or at least part of it. Now Microsoft aims at taking over the music download industry and is making a fair play at it. Microsoft announced and released their beta version of the MSN Music, their online music store and download service.
This new service touts many similarities to Apple's iTunes and also includes many advanced services that Apple fans can only hope for in their future, like video and online radio...
A big advantage of Microsoft is that their music can be played by over 80 different portable music players. Although Apple controls 70 percent of the legal music download market since its launch in April 2003, MSN boasts over 350 million monthly visitors. Like Apple, Microsoft does not plan on making money off music sales or through the hardware itself, their plan is to make money from online ads and through selling their other products. They want their software to be used for as many things as possible.
Currently Microsoft is offering 500,000 songs, but says that it has licensed over 1,000,000 songs from more than 3,000 major and independent music labels.
Microsoft's songs are encoded via Windows Media Audio (WMA). Most songs will average a bit rate of 160Kbps and a peak bit rate of 256Kbps. Apple says that the AAC format is more efficient and sounds as good as music encoded in WMA at higher bit rates. Oh, and of course the songs from Microsoft will be encoded with their DRM encryption schemes. So their music won't play on iPods.
But with that said, Microsoft falls short in many areas compared to the offerings of iTunes. Microsoft lacks many features that are currently offered through iTunes, like gift certificates, audio books, a sophisticated browsing system, and spending limits for kids.
Not all the music will be available for the 99-cent price. Several thousand of their songs will cost more, even reaching $4 each. Ouch! They justify that by saying that those are longer songs or ones that are prerelease hits.
When using the MSN Music Store expect to see ads. A search for Cure, as in The Cure, brings up three ads. The first for Dr. Clark Cures Uncurable Diseases at drclark.ch, a second one to buy CURE Stock for $4 at sharebuilder.com, and then an ad finally for the group, but to buy one of their CD's used at overstock.com.
The MSN Music store isn't that intuitive in its current state. The store is completely online with the option of getting to it through the new Windows Media Player. They say this is an advantage in that you can access the store from any computer with internet access. But what they failed to mention is that to download music you still must download and install their Microsoft Music Assistant.
Currently users are also reporting that Windows Media Player is choking when importing songs in the WMA format but purchased from other online music stores like WalMart.com. So much for giving users a choice of where to buy their songs from.
Of course, Microsoft is saying that the MSN Music store is still in a beta version and that an updated store will be released on October 12. Yeah, we'll see if that will actually happen.
New online music stores have a chance to learn from Apple, but in its current state, the MSN Music store is no match for iTunes.