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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Microsoft's answer to iTunes isn't pretty, doesn't have that great a selection, and won't sell songs that play on an iPod. But it'll still probably take over the world of online music.
Sep 3, 2004 | When Apple launched the Windows version of its iTunes Music Store in San Francisco last October, Steve Jobs, the company's CEO, presided over what his pals in the entertainment industry would call a "gala" event: There were celebrity endorsements from Bono, Dr. Dre and Mick Jagger, a live performance by Sarah McLachlan, and above all there was the larger-than-life Jobs, the least understated man in tech, who unabashedly declared that his new service would revolutionize the way we listen to music.
No such bombast accompanied the launch this week of MSN Music, Microsoft's much-anticipated foray into the online music business. The Microsoft service simply popped up on the Web on Wednesday afternoon, a day earlier than it was scheduled to open, accompanied by little more than a press release. Microsoft's decision to soft-launch the system might have something to do with MSN Music's rough edges; officially, the music store is still in "preview" mode, loaded up with only about 500,000 of the million songs it will eventually offer, and the system is not nearly as pretty as the iTunes Store was when it opened for business.
But there was another reason for Microsoft's sotto voce performance this week: When you're the world's biggest software company, you don't need to hire the Rockettes to get people to pay attention to what you're doing. For years, Microsoft has had designs on digital media; personal computers look poised to play a dominant role in the future distribution of music, movies and television shows, and Microsoft, whose monopoly empire is built on the PC, would like to shape this digital landscape. According to analysts who've pondered Microsoft's decisions to go into the music business, here's the plan as the company sees it: The main aim of the MSN Music shop is to have people purchase songs in Microsoft's Windows Media format, rather than in the AAC format that Apple sells in its store. The Windows Media format (which is used not only for music but also for movies and TV shows) is only compatible with computers and other electronic devices that run or license Windows. Microsoft wants you to store all your content in Windows Media, in other words, in order to lock you into Windows; when all your music and movies are compatible only with Windows devices, how could you ever possibly think of using Linux or Apple or whatever else may come along?
If you think this plan is sinister, you're right, it is. But it's worth noting that in these days of ever-stronger and ever-more-ubiquitous tech-based copy-protection schemes, Microsoft's plan is not that sinister -- it's not bad enough, that is, to make you feel guilty about using the MSN Store. For one thing, promoting a format in order to lock you into a platform is standard operating procedure for Microsoft. The company's various application monopolies -- the main one being Office -- are made possible by the strategic husbanding of "network effects" (i.e., since everyone else you know uses Word, you too must buy Word), and we're all pretty much used to this tactic by now.
And the truth is that Microsoft is not the only company looking to lock you into a media format. Apple, too, doesn't want your music to be free; music from its store will only play on the iPod, and the iPod won't play music from any competing stores. (When RealNetworks recently reverse engineered Apple's system to allow Real's proprietary format to play on the iPod, Apple became apoplectic.) Indeed, because Microsoft will allow other companies to license its format for a whole range of electronic devices while Apple will not, you could argue that the music in the MSN Music store will actually be "more free" than the songs Apple is hawking.
There is nothing really revolutionary about Microsoft's new music service; in concept, the system is an exact replica of Apple's store, with songs on both systems going for the same price, both systems offering a similar easy-to-use interface for downloading and selecting your music, and both systems imposing just about the same restrictions on what you can do with your music once you've purchased it. Still, Microsoft's effort has promise -- the main promise being that because Microsoft is deeply committed to the Windows Media format, and because electronics manufacturers have a long record of making devices to fit Microsoft's specs, there'll probably be no shortage of music players and other fun toys that will work with your Windows Media files long into the future.
It's dispiriting to have to choose one copy-protection scheme over another; ideally, all our music would be sold in an open format like MP3, playable forever however we please. But the recording industry would never allow software companies to do that, and so, in a world of digital rights management, we now have to choose: Apple or Microsoft?
And after using the MSN Music store for just a few minutes, you'll see that the answer may well be Microsoft. This isn't because MSN Music is as good as iTunes, or that the third-party portable music players that work with it are as good as the iPod -- they're not. But Microsoft's system is pretty good. It works well, does most everything you need it to do, and it'll very likely become much better soon. It is good enough. Good enough, that is, to cause one to wonder whether Steve Job's revolution will (once again) get hijacked by Bill Gates.
The MSN Music service is available on the Web, but most people are likely to encounter it when they download the latest version of the Windows Media Player, which Microsoft released on Thursday. (You'll probably need to download it sometime, and if you don't, you'll find it on the new Windows machine that odds say you'll buy within the next couple years.) MSN Music is well integrated into the new Media Player, but the first thing one notices about the system is that Microsoft's store is not the only music shop that's included in the player. In addition to accessing Microsoft's store, you can buy songs from Napster, Wal-Mart and several other companies, all without leaving the familiar confines of the Windows Media Player interface. This is a neat trick. Apple's iTunes Store is completely managed by Apple, which is, for the most part, a fine arrangement. But as a matter of economic freedom, not to mention freedom in art, it's always better to have the choice to buy your song from one of several companies rather than from just one. If the MSN shop doesn't have your song, you can easily click over to Wal-Mart (88 cent downloads!) to check for it, and having that choice is a warm comfort.
Other than the integrated music stores, there isn't much obviously new in Microsoft's new Windows Media Player. One long-overdue feature that Microsoft has finally introduced is the ability to encode music in the MP3 format, rather than only in Windows Media format -- what this means is that you can now use the Windows Media Player to rip your CDs without worrying that the music will only play on just Windows Media devices. This is an interesting retreat for the company; users of the system have long been frustrated by the file-format nightmares caused by Windows Media Player's aversion to MP3-ripping. Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a consulting firm that focuses on the company's big moves, speculates that the lack of this feature was causing many users to switch over to other media apps, particularly iTunes, which can also rip CDs into MP3s. But in an e-mail, Erin Cullen, the lead product manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media Division, said the company's decision to include MP3-ripping was all about liberating users. "One of the central themes of Microsoft's digital media strategy is providing consumers' choice," she wrote. "That means the flexibility to choose the device they wish to purchase, the service they want to use and, now, the format with which they want to rip their music."
It is easy to be cynical about Microsoft's apparent embrace of freedom of choice in digital media. It's easy because we're talking about Microsoft, which has never shown much fondness for the sensibilities of the tech-based freedom movements (like, for instance, the open source movement); and because we're talking about digital music, which, due to the record industry's paranoia over copyright, seems destined never to be free. Microsoft's new media player is, furthermore, weighed down by a host of sophisticated new "digital rights management" tools that promise to allow media companies a great deal of power over how you use media files.
