Microsoft is now in competition with the iTunes Music Store...

[Supernatural Pie]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=569&e=1&u=/nm/20040902/tc_nm/tech_microsoft_music_dc_7


By Reed Stevenson
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"SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) launched a new online store for music downloads on Wednesday, taking direct aim at Apple Computer Inc.'s (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) popular iTunes music service.


MSN Music, which is aimed at luring more users to the world's largest software maker's online service, launched in beta, or test mode, offering songs for download at 99 cents each, the same price as Apple's online store.



Users can access MSN Music from a browser as well as a brand new version of the Windows Media Player that also was unveiled.



"We believe we've built a better service than the Apple service," Yusuf Mehdi, MSN vice president, said in an interview.



Mehdi said that MSN Music would launch with more than 500,000 songs and grow quickly to more than 1 million. The songs will be encoded in the Windows Media format at a higher bit rate than Apple's standard format for iTunes, resulting in better sound quality, Mehdi added.



Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, had been working to be the first to offer Beatles songs for download for the debut of MSN Music. While they are not being offered on the service yet, "we feel very comfortable that they're going to be offered online soon" Mehdi said.



While Apple offers online music to sell more of its iPod portable music players, MSN Music is mainly designed to draw more users to the MSN portal, which in turn will help drive advertising revenue, a major source of profit for MSN.



Mike McGuire, analyst at Gartner G2, said that MSN Music had "serious potential" but said that the competition between MSN Music and iTunes will be more about brand recognition rather than underlying technology.



"They're (Microsoft) battling a real powerful brand," McGuire said, saying that Apple's end-to-end user experience would be hard to match.



Microsoft, for its part, touted its simplified MSN Music interface, with white backgrounds and minimal design elements, which he said allows users to sign up for an account with fewer clicks than iTunes.



Microsoft also said that MSN Music would also be integrated with the upcoming launch of its revamped search engine so that music downloads would be included in search results for music-related queries.



Microsoft is targeting Google Inc.'s (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) pole position as the Web's most popular search engine and is planning to launch its own MSN Search service this fall based on its own technology.



One of the key differences between MSN Music and Apple's iTunes is that users won't be limited to single store and single device type, but rather be able to choose from a variety of devices and online music services, Mehdi said.



MSN Music is one of a few other stores that users can access via the Windows Media Player. Napster (news - web sites) also offers music downloads and CinemaNow offers movies online.



Hardware makers such as Rio, Creative and Dell are also making portable digital music players that work with Windows and store downloaded music.



Although Microsoft gave few specifics, it is also planning to integrate its music services with it instant messaging service, so that people swapping text messages can listen to songs together and eventually access other playlists during instant messaging sessions.



Microsoft also said that portable media center devices for storing and playing audio as well as video content, would be available in Europe from mid-September."

[spike]

I know its just business and all, but god I hate them.

[Toxic::Joka]

omg.. .wmv's,  the whole thing is doomed to fail, everybody hates wmv's.. . even PC users.

Microsoft is kinda like a rich kid with a bag of shit thats trying to get all the other kids to play with his bag of shit. Few want to tough, so he paints his bag in all the colors of the rainbow and spray some deodorant on it. Then he starts luring all the other kids to play with the bag...  

ummm.. . Ok, I promise that when I started writing on that analogy it seemed to make perfect sense.. . now I'm not so sure, maybe if you look at it from the right angle.. .

[BFG]

Why anyone thought inventing the .wmv format was a good idea i will never know...

So far all the reports ive read havn't been exactly blown away with the msn music store. 1 it dosn't have half as much music as apple, 2, its a freaking shitty piece of software (not like itunes! ) 3. Its .wmv format which sucks ass and cannot be used on ipods and ipod minis (rules out over 50% of the market)

All in all... crap

[bronto]

i for one, would never use either service, mp3 is only good when it's ripped at a high variable bitrate (128-320kbps). so CDs are always better for me, but i would go with apple if i had to pick one because A) WMV IS THE WORST FUCKING THING EVER and B) if it's windows, you know it's going to be a rediculous pain in the ass to do anything, with offers of more of their stupid services popping up all over the place. they try too hard to buy you.

[seth]

"Today the score is:
iTunes: 125 million songs downloaded
Microsoft: 0 songs downloaded"

[BTs_Mysterio]

i for one, would never use either service, mp3 is only good when it's ripped at a high variable bitrate (128-320kbps). so CDs are always better for me, but i would go with apple if i had to pick one because A) WMV IS THE WORST FUCKING THING EVER and B) if it's windows, you know it's going to be a rediculous pain in the ass to do anything, with offers of more of their stupid services popping up all over the place. they try too hard to buy you.

128 AAC is better than almost any level you could encode MP3 at bronto. MP3 is the predecessor to MP4 (AAC). I don't understand why you mention MP3 at all during this, seeing as no stores sell MP3 format.

The funniest part of the Microsoft music store is some songs are "CD Only". Wow, they just suck. The thing is microsoft can never get even half of the market seeing as Apple's iPod possesses the majority of the MP3 player market.

[seth]

128 AAC is better than almost any level you could encode MP3

that remains to be prooved since some studies say it is and others it aint. I strongly doubt that a 128 AAC is better than a 192 mp3 !!! probably equivalent to a 160 though..

[crypt]

To the untrained ear, it's all the same, which accounts for most people (including me)

[seth]

To the untrained ear, it's all the same, which accounts for most people (including me)

i wouldnt say the untrained ear, i'dsay in the Ipod, its all the same.

[BFG]

Everytime, on everything .aac beats .mp3 hands down

that remains to be prooved since some studies say it is and others it aint. I strongly doubt that a 128 AAC is better than a 192 mp3 !!! probably equivalent to a 160 though..

Good quality AAC sounds better than CD quality mate - (as long as youve not simply encoded the aac file from a cd!)

strongly doubt that a 128 AAC is better than a 192 mp3

Yep, better than 192

[seth]

Good quality AAC sounds better than CD quality mate - (as long as youve not simply encoded the aac file from a cd!)

BFG, i'm just going to assume you're still numb from your accident (you're telling me compressed music "sounds" better than CD quality !)  

Now for the 128 AAC being better than the 192 mp3 (we take the best encoders for each audio format), i'm gonna need written proof on that.

[Daf One]

I'm reading a biography about Bill Gates and about how Microsoft missed on the Internet in the early 1990s.  It talks about how Microsoft tried dominating every market, taking/copying similar programs into their own.  They got sued a lot by Novell, Lotus, IBM, and various small companies, but still won.  This sort of reminds me of that, when Microsoft knows it missed on something and is trying to play catch-up, like they did when they missed the Internet.

[BTs_Mysterio]

Good quality AAC sounds better than CD quality mate - (as long as youve not simply encoded the aac file from a cd!)

BFG, i'm just going to assume you're still numb from your accident (you're telling me compressed music "sounds" better than CD quality !)  

Now for the 128 AAC being better than the 192 mp3 (we take the best encoders for each audio format), i'm gonna need written proof on that.

Bobby, I assume you're still numb from the many times you were dropped as a baby. You speak like Dvorak, think you know a lot, but really don't know jack shit. Bobby, look things up. You obviously don't use written proof in your claims.

[seth]

Mysterio, instead of bashing systematicaly what i'm saying, why dont you get me those written proof, and by written i mean a serious article, not you writting insane words..

[BTs_Mysterio]

Bobby, you want some proof? Not too hard to find, in-fact I'll do it as I write this post.

"For example, a 128-kilobit-per-second (kbit/s) AAC file should sound as good as or better than a 160 kbit/s MP3 file. Because the bit rate is lower, the AAC file will also be smaller than the MP3 file. AAC files allow you to store the most music on your hard disk or iPod. The High Quality AAC setting creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93013


From Apple themselves now shut up bobby.

[Mr. Lothario]

     Objection, touting the superiority of a format using statements made by the proponents of that format is not exactly rock-solid evidence.

[BFG]

Well one thing u can't argue about is that Ogg Vorbis beats mp3 hands down every time, no competition, end of story!

[BFG]

ps....[urlhttp://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html[/url]

Somewhat out of date.... http://www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/aac-mp3-vq.html http://www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/aac-mp3-vq-2.html

[bronto]

myst...bobby is right. changing sound formats is never going to raise sound quality higher then the original. this is why i use variable bit rate, it raises and lowers the bitrate within itself to match the quality of the original track...saves space, doesn't lose much quality at all.