MusicMatch today launched its own online music store. MusicMatch offers “200,000 songs” priced at 99-cents each, a similar amount to Apple’s iTunes Music Store catalog at the time of Apple’s launch. MusicMatch is currently available to the U.S. The company promises to make 500,000 tracks available by the end of the year, according to Macworld UK.
Downloads are available as 160Kbs Windows Media 9 files. Reportedly, Dell will use a re-branded version of the MusicMatch online music store along with the Dell Digital Jukebox (DJ) music player in an attempt to approximate Apple’s integrated iTMS/iPod approach.
“MusicMatch CEO Dennis Mudd calls his 99-cents-a-song service a ‘breakthrough,’ because he acquired liberal usage rules similar to those in Apple’s acclaimed iTunes Music Store: Buyers can burn songs and transfer them to portable devices as often as they want. Apple’s service, introduced in April, has sold more than 10 million tracks to date. But it’s available only to Macintosh users
“160Kbs Windows Media 9 files?”
Vomit.
Ah, so the competition has arrived. Let play commence.
Ah, so the real competition has arrived. The best thing about this is that it’s going to wipe the floor with Buymusic.com.
Oh, didn’t think that first post had gone through. Now I look a right t*at
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Hmmm…
99 cents a song
$9.99 an album
Only available in the US?
Sounds familiar.
Also, if you sign up now, you can win on of 99 Rio’s.
On their main page, they state “Get the world’s best music player” Are they implying that the Rio is better than iPod?
Can the iPod (through MusicMatch) play the WMV files?
If not, there will be a backlash from iPod for Windows users.
The interface is a complete rip-off. Surely there must be some IP law that protects this stuff.
This industry practice where Dell move in after someone’s created a market is absolutely killing innovation. Not just as Mac users, but as anyone who enjoys progression in electronics must start convincing people to stop purchasing Dell. They’re greedy scabs that encite companies to stop innovating just so they can keep up with Dell’s murderously efficient assembly process and B2C ordering system. When the fat’s gone from the industry, there will be no money left for R&D. No competition.
Support innovation. Support HP. Support Sony. Support Mac. Wal-mart and Dell are coporate cancers that need abating.
So did they copy Apple’s FairPlay rights model or not?
Instantly Download Tracks & Albums Quickly buy entire albums or purchase just a few select tracks. Hear a track on Musicmatch Radio you’d like to buy? No problem. Download songs as you listen. Then enjoy crystal-clear, CD-quality music anytime, anywhere. Add tracks to your Music Library, burn them to CDs, download them to portable players, and you’re ready to go!
But not transfer songs to up to 3 authorized pcs, let alone the ability to deauthorize a computer? And can you burn unlimited CDs of the same playlist? Intelligent music lovers want to know!
Apple should hurry up .. becasue people don’t care if it is original .. they care if it is windows … it is sad .. but that is the status quo
One reason Apple can still win if they hurry up…
From USA Today:
“The downloads are in the Windows Media format, which can be played on most modern digital portables but is not compatible with the most popular unit — Apple’s own iPod. “
NOT COMPATIBLE WITH iPod.
Apple has garnered even more of the laptop “market” yet this guy has downgraded Apple to “2%.” First of all, do any of these people actually EVER research this or do they just echo each other. Since some of “us” actually keep tabs on the computer industry, crap like this leaps out as us. Doesn’t it make you wonder about the VALIDITY of the rest of the stuff you read or see in the news? I mean, computers I know. I been in the business for better than 25 years. You can tell me anything about medicine though, I’d have to believe you. You can tell me anything about, oh, Iraq, and I’d have to believe you. When all the news outlets start echoing each other, I always think about how wrong they typically are about the Macintosh, and take everything they’re saying with one large grain of salt.
Second, what is the “market.” When they say, “Apple has only x% of the computer market,” what do they mean? Are they saying that Apple only accounts for x% of all the computers in the world? Are they saying that Apple only sells x% of all new computers sold? Either way, where do they get those numbers. Would you bet that this guy did any research whatsoever to come up with his “2%?”
As a Macintosh consultant, from my point of view, Apple seems to have 80% of “the market.” Hey, my observations are probably more accurate than someone just repeating what he’s heard.
I have clients in entertainment industry, movies, music, designers, producers, directors, as well as lawyers, clothing manufacturers, publicists, people in biotech, education, etc. All day long, every day, I see Macs and work with pretty much nothing but Macs.
In the city I live in there are, let’s see, there are 7 Apple Stores within driving distance, not a single “Dell Store” or “Gateway Store” and that doesn’t count all the other Apple outlets in the vacinity.
Everyone who knows me doesn’t even ask, they buy a Macintosh OR ELSE! Ha ha ha! Seriously, or else means, “You’re on your own.”
Saturday I was in the UCLA Computer Store. I watched 3 dual 2.0GHz G5s roll out of the store. I helped one guy who was a bit too old to get his to his car. Didn’t see a single PC being sold.
I picked up my own dual 2.0 G5 on Thursday. The Apple Store had a shipment of 20. They sold out of them in 2 days.
I guess I’m saying, it’s time for someone to update and challenge those often repeated figures. I really starting to wonder how much is truth and how much is perception.
While you were helping load that G5 into the guy’s car, Dell probably sold 5,000 PCs online. You personal experience doesn’t matter. What matters is how many Macs are selling vs. other platforms, if you want to know the real marketshare. No entity monitors this correctly, measuring every outlet, so the real market share numbers are actually unknown.
Wasnt musicmatch the outfit that suppored iPod on Windows? What happened – why did they turn anti-mac? [WM9 Only] Why didnt apple buy them out for the windows version of iTunes, or at least continue to work with them? What happened?
MusicMatch sucks, is what happened. Apple picked them because MM is the best jukebox on Windows, but that still isn’t saying much.
The more competition, the better.
Musicmatch does suck compared to iTunes, but we’ll just have to see more of the fine print of these lesser restrictions. Allegedly BuyMusic will get the same deal too. I too am interested in finding out more of of the details here such as how many PCs can be authorized and if you can de-authorize an old PC, etc, like you can with iTMS and Macs.
As for the market share issue, 2nd quarter numbers show Apple has 7% of the U.S. laptop market and 4% of the desktop market, so they’re probably right around 5% overall. That also doesn’t take into account the overall installed base, so of course, the 2% quoted in the article is way wrong as usual from the uninformed mainstream press…
Among consumers/home users I’m sure the numbers are even higher. Those numbers released on Friday are for all sales overall and a lot of those are surely Dell/HP/etc workstation sales most assuredly. Anytime Dell does sell 5,000 systems say, a majority of those likely never end up in a home or in the hands of a typical consumer, they’re used strictly for business use as a terminal or something in an office cubicle. And there certainly won’t be a lot of music downloading ever coming from any of those machines.
On the other side of the coin, we all know Apple doesn’t sell nearly as many systems to corporations percentage wise as Dell, HP and the others do, so most of their machines end up in homes and in the hands of consumers that might actually use them for such a purpose. Anyone that quotes that 2% crap these days is full of it. Apple is the fifth largest manufacturer in terms of overall sales and we all know the overwhelming majority of that goes strictly to consumers. In the home/consumer market once you filter out all of the corporate purchases their share is easily closer to 10% since it’s already at about 5% even when you include all sales made including those to businesses.
If you count all those unused, obsolete, Wintel Boxes in people’s basements, and storage rooms of companies around the world, then Apple has a 2% market share.
Remember, Wintel boxes are commodities, and are disposable.
Remember, Wintel boxes are commodities, and are disposable.
That will change when people have hundreds of $$ invested in WMP songs from MusicMatch that they can’t transfer to their new PC.
That will change when people have hundreds of $$ invested in WMP songs from MusicMatch that they can’t transfer to their new PC.
Who says that they won’t be able to do that?
The new MS DRM links your software to your computer by looking at ALL your components including HD size, make, etc and RAM.
Right now if you Office XP on one computer and change three things (RAM, HD, ethernet card) XP will stop working.
If the new DRM for the WMV files are similar, Apple will still win.
The only restrictions I can find about using MusicMatch’s downloaded software is on http://www.musicmatch.com/info/terms/index.htm , but it is vague, and I don’t think the music industry will be happy with it.
–start quote–
It is your responsibility, not MUSICMATCH’s, to ensure that any material that you record on CDs using the MUSICMATCH Jukebox CD Recording function does not violate anyone’s copyright. Please note that there may be more than one copyright involved in any song–the lyrics, the music and the performance, for example, may each have a separate copyright. You are responsible for getting any necessary permission and paying any necessary licensing fees for the music or other material you choose to record. If you violate the copyright laws, there may be fines or criminal charges brought against you, even if you don’t get any commercial benefit from the illegal copies. You agree to hold MUSICMATCH harmless from your violation of copyright laws by your use of the CD Recorder.
–end quote–
MacCentral is reporting that the MusicMatch store does allow use on up to three PCs. But there is no mention about deauthorizing/authorizing songs to transfer them to a new machine… The answer to this may define the difference between Apple’s FairPlay and the MM DRM.
It would have been so easy for them (Dell DJ, MusicMatch) to include MP3 support as well as WMP. But they didn’t – probably to kowtow to the music industry. But Apple didn’t have to. So there’s another advantage for Apple (though most consumers won’t bother to learn the difference)
“MusicMatch CEO Dennis Mudd calls his 99-cents-a-song service a “breakthrough,” because he acquired liberal usage rules similar to those in Apple’s acclaimed iTunes Music Store: Buyers can burn songs and transfer them to portable devices as often as they want.”
This is my problem with today’s journalism: distortion of the original meaning of words such as innovation and breakthough. Mudd calls his service a breakthough because he managed to copy others.
One of the definition of breaktrough is:
*A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology.
Therefore, once there is a breaktrough, the next thing that is similar to it is no longer a breaktrough. To make a new breaktrough, it has to surpass the original.
I just wish journalists take this more seriously and either explain it in the article or force the interviewee to own up.