Microsoft Unveils 'Urge' Music Service 582
CHaN_316 writes "CNNMoney has an article entitled, 'Gates unveils his Urge.' From the piece: 'Bill Gates aims to take over your living room and late Wednesday he unveiled a new music service and new software to do it. 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.' Begin the living room wars we must." Confirmation of an earlier story on this topic.
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:5, Informative)
Even more interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
-Rick
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:2, Informative)
AS for DRM, yes iTMS has it, however I don't have 5 computers at home to use up all my authentications and I have no problems transferring them between the computers I have.
I also have a CD Burner, in case I want to lend some tunes to a friend.
I wonder what MS's DRM terms are.
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:2, Informative)
-1 Troll (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Urge to... (Score:1, Informative)
Remember the last time Microsoft took on Apple, when Apple already had the major market share, Microsoft handed Apple its ass on a plate with a laughably inferior product: MS-DOS. Oh the Shame....
Would it be fair play to laugh in iSteve's face if history is repeated?
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Smart move (Score:2, Informative)
Subscription is good, I guess, if you like not having any control over your music library and like to forever pay. People are suprised when they find out that "Plays for Sure" doesn't mean zero issues, but instead means that the player will wipe all songs after a given date.
MSN MUZAK STOARE AKA Urge(ent need to pee) (Score:3, Informative)
Billy Boy's new toy, not compatible with the most popular by far audio player, will only help Billy Boy to lose even more money than his current MSN venture does.
My only wish, Billy Boy, is that in a year or two, some journalist with real balls instead of the pants-shitting, brown-nosing creeps that pretend to be such these days, will play you back a recording of your words this day and force you to either admit to just how badly you erred, or to get you to walk out of the studio in tears.
Re:Look at the sales numbers... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yet Another Music Store (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to reply to AC postings but I have to correct this.
WMA-AAC conversion via iTunes only works on iTunes for Windows. Unless things've changed recently without me noticing, it's not possible in OS X iTunes.
And if things have changed recently, please let me know as although I don't use WMA it'd be nice to know.
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:3, Informative)
- ActiveX: This {is,is not} signed, do you want to trust it? It runs (iirc) as any other program on your PC. Downsides: terrible permissions granularity, Windows-only.
- Java Applets: This {is,is not} signed by foo and asks for permission to do bar, do you want to give it these permissions (e.g. disk access)? Runs in a sandbox, so access (unless signed and allowed and barring bugs) outside the sandbox is verboten. Downsides: For full functionality, requires Sun or Sun-compatible Java runtime, so is usually an extra download for users. For abridged functionality, you may wish to restrict your functionality to the ancient Java runtime 1.1.1, which is (at least mostly) implemented in Microsoft's Windows-Extended Java (also known as "Microsoft VM"), but will still likely be an additional (free) download for most users. I suspect Macs come bundled with Java, but I'm not certain.
- XUL: A mozilla-only technology, does applications via XPCOM, XML, and JavaScript. Downsides: Restricted functionality (unless you can install stuff for XPCOM, I think, I'm somewhat fuzzy on this) compared to other solutions; Mozilla-only, a (free) download for most users.
- XAML: Microsoft's take on XUL. Windows Vista only (if it's still included, which iirc it is), I believe it requires Microsoft's
.net, but I could be wrong.
- AJAX: entirely javascript in-browser. Downsides: requires good JavaScript compatibility.
- Plain old CGI: available in any browser. Downsides: very, very limited ease of use compared to other solutions, places very rigid restraints on the user-server interaction.
- Shockwave Flash: I have little experience with this outside of watching short animations and interactive websites with it. Downside: requires Shockwave Flash plugin (a problem on any non-x86 platform, last I knew, including x86_64!)
There are likely others, but these are probably the most common. Notably, several of these are quite cross-platform and provide little, if any, vendor lockin, and the security options of some are much better than the security options of others.Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:5, Informative)
MS lets you have your music on 2 computers ever, including the same computer uprgraded.
Apple lets you have it on any 5 computers at the same time. if you have 5 computers and buy a 6th, you can just unregister one of the old ones. I honestly don't see how being restricted to only 5 computers simultaneously interferes with any more than a tiny minority of legitimate users. and even when you are affected it just means one less computer - no music is lost.
MS's system on the other hand is guaranteed to affect every user who upgrades, and to effect them in such a way that they lose all their music completely.
Re:Christian rock (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well, you should also mention pandora.com (Score:2, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/29/15122
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/17302
But I do agree with you, it is a great site. I am currently using the free version.
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:3, Informative)
Because the record companies are greedy fucks who don't get it and you're not going to have any sort of comprehensive catalog without a minimum of DRM at this point in history.
Next question?
Re:Look at the sales numbers... (Score:5, Informative)
Try 30 million iPods sold [tuaw.com] (as of Nov 2005).
It isn't even close.
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:3, Informative)
One nice thing Apple lets you do is deauthorize all of your computers at the same time from the iTunes web site. That way, if you sold one of your computers or if you signed on to a public computer or a friend's computer with your Apple ID, nobody else can use your account, etc.
Pet Peeve (Score:1, Informative)
Only uneducated (and/or careless) morons say SHOULD OF.
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:1, Informative)
The stuff about Microsoft came from the GP post, who got it from Microsoft's website.
The stuff about Apple's iTunes comes from Apple's website.
So no, it's not nonsense. Don't believe it? Go read the websites.
Peter
Re:Give us what we went, not what you want to give (Score:1, Informative)
People tolerate Apple's restrictions because they find the restrictions tolerable.
You can burn iTMS purchases to CD. Can you do that with URGE purchases?
It is slightly tedious but possible to make non-DRM copies of iTMS purchases with no loss of quality. Can you do that with URGE purchases?
It is possible to make mp3 copies of iTMS purchases that you can then play on any mp3 player. Can you do that with URGE?
iTMS purchases can be played on up to five different computers at the same time. URGE purchases can be played on two computers, ever.
Ten years from now, you can play your iTMS purchases on up to five totally different computers. Five years from now, when you have upgraded your PC twice, you will not be able to play your URGE purchases at all.
Apple can impose new terms at any time and you have to comply. Maybe they'll move theirs to be more in line with Microsoft.
Sometime in the future, Apple might change the terms, which would then apply to any future iTMS purchases. If Apple tried to make the change in terms retroactive, they would face a class action lawsuit faster than you can say "iTunes Music Store".
On the other hand, Microsoft's restrictions now guarantee that songs you purchase from URGE now will not be playable after you have upgraded your computer twice.
I know which restrictions I am willing to tolerate.
Peter
Re:Smart move (Score:3, Informative)
Not to split hairs... but no, you don't.
You don't have a single song from them; you have access to those songs as long as you continue to pay. This is a great system for those who understand this (rather large) distinction, and crave constant new music. To many other people - the vast majority, according to my company's research (I work for a DSP) do not understand that distinction and are rather annoyed when they figure it out. Bottom line, if the music is on people's hard drives, they assume that they own it. If it streams, they understand that it is like 'radio'. What you have with Yahoo's service is essentially random-access radio. But you do not own those songs unless you buy them; the fact that it is only 79 per track reflects the fact that you already pay them a monthly fee on top of that.
Re:Urge to... (Score:2, Informative)