I've resisted buying an iPod or any of the various other portable music/video devices because I don't like the idea of paying for each song/video that I want to consume. Now that Microsoft is coming out with Urge and a buffet-style price scheme, I'm sure the rest of the industry will follow.
Using an appearance with Justin Timberlake, the Microsoft chairman debuted a new music service, Urge, to directly compete with the iTunes music store and interface. Urge launches with over 2 million tracks for purchase or as part of an all-you-can eat subscription, an option the iTunes music store doesn't have. The offering will include exclusive material from MTV, though it will not be compatible with iPods, which are currently the most popular MP3 player.
Combined with Vongo's buffet of movies, now we're getting somewhere.
Details seems to be minimal on this service, but it doesn't sound like anything new. Rhapsody and Napster do the same thing. The catch is you can download as much music as you want, but if you let your subscription lasp, your music goes away. If you buy a song through iTunes you aren't required to keep paying Apple every month.
There are three reasons MS won't win the digital music war with Apple.
1. It doesn't work with the iPod.
2. It doesn't work with the iPod.
3. It doesn't work...ok I'll say something else, they are too late on the scene.
And it is made my MS so it will suck.
Nah... Microsoft products are fine, for the most part. Windows ME was their biggest blunder in recent memory.
Actually, thinking that allowing a picture to call code was a good idea (WMF vulnerability) is their biggest blunder in recent memory.
As for buffet style pricing, it really does limit what you can do with your music. There will be some who appreciate this way of music ownership but it's not the first company to try this method of music marketing and previous efforts have been, disappointing.
iTMS was not a part of the original iTunes, neither were podcasts. Apple has created a framework that could accommodate an iBuffet of music just fine by adding a line right next to the podcast entry. I'm sure there's some magic number for Apple to release just such a feature when x consumers adopt buffet style pricing. The code is not challenging and certainly the contract negotiation will not be onerous.
Until that happens, Apple will sit out and leave their interface as uncluttered and simple as possible, catching what most people want and leaving the minority pleasing purchasing methods to competitors.
TML: The WMF vulnerability wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't exploited. Microsoft is fixing the problem now that they know it's been turned into an exploit.
Windows ME was crap right out of the box. No exploitation was necessary.
Can you burn CDs of the music you download from these "all you can eat" services? If so, then the music can be yours forever.
If not, then why are they successful? Is it because you can load the music to portable players? Does the music "expire" in the portable players after a while? I'd have to learn more about these "all you can eat" subscription-based services to understand how they can keep you from REALLY owning all the music you download.
Microsoft PlaysForSure (also known as "Janus") services that allow subscription/all-you-can-eat models work using the WM10 DRM library. Basically, the owner of the content can give you a license which permits several things, including:
* Playing the song
* Burning the song to CD
* Transferring the song to non-DRM players
* Transferring the song to DRM-enabled players
Any and all of these features can be time or date limited -- the copyright owner could allow you to play the song but stipulate that it expires 30 days after the download, for example. Portable media players which are Janus DRM-enabled carry these restrictions as well if you transfer the file -- so if you only have a 30 day license for the song, and you put it on your Creative MP3 player, it will still expire and be unplayable there in 30 days. (This is done using a secure transfer technology called MTP, the Media Transfer Protocol.)
Napster (which is currently the only service that allows you to put all-you-can-eat music on portable players, as far as I know -- Rhapsody does not) operates by giving you a 30 day license for music that's synchronized to your subscription renewal date. The license allows you to play files and transfer them to Janus-enabled portable players, but it will not let you burn them to CD or transfer them to a non-DRM player.
Every time you connect your portable player to the computer, it updates the licenses for all songs on the player -- so as long as you don't have it disconnected for more than 30 days, you'll never notice the renewal process. When your subscription is cancelled, all the music will expire in that 30 day window.
Napster, like iTunes, allows you to purchase tracks for a dollar a pop -- and these purchased tracks are *mostly* free of the restrictions that apply to the "rented" tracks from the subscription plan. They can be burned to CD or transferred to non-Janus players, but they still do have some restrictions -- such as not being able to be copied to other PCs. (Though the Napster service will allow you to download the same song on up to three computers.)
This whole situation is a very ugly balance between preventing the kind of widespread theft of intellectual property that goes on with services such as Gnutella, and giving the legitimate user maximum flexibility in listening to the music they're paying for. Right now, I think they're still erring too far in the protectionist direction, and as a result, they aren't yet offering enough people reasons to "go legit".