“When purchasing a personal computer, buyers used to grapple with the decision: a Macintosh from Apple Computer or a Microsoft-based PC? Microsoft effectively won that operating system debate years ago and claims more than 90% of the PC operating system market,” Jefferson Graham writes for USA Today. “But in the push to legally sell digital music, Apple and Microsoft, and their incompatible file formats, are at it again. Consumers are in the position of having to choose as hardware makers line up behind either Microsoft or Apple’s software format.”
“Hewlett-Packard’s recent surprise decision to snub longtime PC partner Microsoft and offer Apple music software on its PCs shows how unpredictable this battle may be. ‘Microsoft lost the first round of the digital music war,’ says Phil Leigh, an analyst with research firm Inside Digital Media. Apple’s iTunes software ‘was good enough to persuade (H-P) … to switch. That’s huge,'” Graham writes.
“For now, Dell, which battles H-P for PC market share dominance, promotes music in Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio (WMA) format on its computers – as do most Windows-based PCs,” Graham writes. Likewise, most portable music devices sold today – with the exception of Apple’s best-selling and acclaimed iPod – use Microsoft’s format. That means consumers who use portable music players and buy songs from Apple must use the iPod; consumers who purchase from non-Apple online music stores must use portable devices based on Microsoft’s format,” Graham writes.
“Scott Kauffman, CEO of MusicNow, thinks owners of H-P PCs are going to wonder why their iTunes songs can’t go onto all of their Best Buy devices. ‘This is a tactical mistake for H-P that will mushroom into a strategic blunder,’ he says. ‘It’s the single biggest complaint we get in customer service,’ says Dennis Mudd, CEO of Musicmatch, another online music store and software maker: ‘Why can’t I move this song to an iPod?’ Mudd also says that H-P is in danger of promoting future sales of Apple Macs – by promoting Apple software on its own PCs. That could hurt its own PC sales,’ Graham writes.
Full article here.
What does the HP/Apple deal say about a company whos tagline is “Invent” when you borrow technology? It says we admit there can be no better music service/product combo than iPod/iTunes. I am waiting for iChat/iSight. Then GarageBand/Apple branded Keyboard. Then Apple buy ElGato, combines EyeTV and EyeHome to one setttop box and sell iHome. Now people look around at all the Apple stuff and say “what about buying an Apple Computer?” Perfect!
“How about a HP branded Mac running OS X. Manufactured by Apple but supported by HP.”
I think that’s the only way Apple would do the whole “cloning” thing again, but even that would really surprise me.
As for the iPod being able to play WMA files, I bet we’ll see it in the next year or so, after they’ve scooped up the rest of the fence sitters. Then they’ll release an iPod update allowing all iPods to play WMA and get those last few stupid folks who bought from iTunes competitors. When those people start to buy AAC and hear how much better they sound, the game will be over.
Hey, I need a URL for the quote from Steve Dahmer (oh, I mean Ballmer) about Windows being “good enough for the masses” for my weekly newpaper article. Anybody know it off-hand? Thanks.
It always strikes me funny that these people complain about iPod not supporting their format and blame Apple for it. If one buys an iPod ($299+ purchase) and encounters a song in WMA ($0.99), will one:
a. throw away the iPod so that one can buy a $0.99 song
b. vow never to buy those WMA songs
If the single biggest complain is the playback of WMA in iPod, that means a significant fraction of his customers use iPod. Does Mudd realistically expect that they throw away a major purchase for things that cost pennies? Maybe Mudd should support AAC format instead, if he wants to keep his customers. But then again, I am not a CEO…
I agree with all who pointed out that if the #1 customer question/ complaint was “why can’t I get this to my iPod” why don’t more services use ACC/Fairplay to reach more customers.
I don’t think we’ll see HP OSX clones, but think of the possibilities of HP selling Xserves, Xraids, and Xserve cluster nodes……. All with Panther server, all Mac, Linux, and Windows file ready and compatable right out of the box…… Enterprise Apple solutions, acceptance, and street cred in one easy step.
KennyLucius,
I think it depends on the context of how you view the HP-Apple deal. In short term, you are right: Apple gains a retailer, HP gains popularity. But if you view this in
1. WMA-AAC war
2. HP’s defiance of Microsoft (this is a big one)
3. Slow death of many music download services
4. iPods competitors facing thougher battle
contexes, this is a major news with the repercussion felt months from now.
Why do you think MS’s Baghdad Dave, Dell, MusicMatch, MusicNow make noises? That is because with a single deal, their businesses are threatened. This is not like “Macy sells iPod” which carries no implication other than iPod’s popularity. Well, at tleast, that is my take.
You can only cry “wolf” so many times before people stop believing it, especially since Apple is finally getting much wider exposure to all of their products as a result of this venture. It appears that the M$ zombies are beginning to get desperate, using such obvious FUD – usually it’s more subtle than this…
The no. 1 complain to Musicmatch is also interesting in itself. It shows that customers are oblivious to the format war. The fact is, they didn’t buy iPod because of it uses AAC and certainly don’t give a damn about the lack of WMA support. So, I think they buy iPods because it sounds great and is cool, very usable, and fun to have and to use. This bodes very well for Apple since Microsoft’s name is removed from the equation for many people (i.e. non-Windows fan boys or non-(MS==popular==good) crowd).
Nobody: I see your point.
>> ‘It’s the single biggest complaint we get in customer service,’ says Dennis Mudd, CEO of Musicmatch, another online music store and software maker: ‘Why can’t I move this song to an iPod?’ <<
What idiot gave this guy a job? Maybe he needs to pull his head out of his nether parts and get a clue! Maybe the problem is you idiots don’t offer compabilitity with the best MP3 player in the world? Sheesh, the Windows blinders are awfully effective.
MacMaineiac: unfortunately I don’t have the reference that you’re looking for, but I have written a rather long winded counter argument to theregister.co.uk’s article “How HP invented the market for iPod resellers”, with some rather obvious hintsthat we are witnessing the beginning of the WMA battle between MS and the rest of the world, where Apple and HP start a strategic alliance in favour of AAC, you interested?
If so, drop a line at [url=http://www.flyermoney.com]http://www.flyermoney.com[/url] by clicking on any instance of my name within the site…
HP was smart and hooked up with a winner, lets face it, there is no other decent, cool and better iPod, than Apples iPod.
In fact some Dell dude tried to peddle “da Brick” MP3 player and got laughed off the iPodLounge.
“lamepod” it was called.
And another thing, once someone has dropped the money down to get a iPod, they are not going to change to another player for many, many years.
If Microsoft disables iTunes in Longhorn and doesn’t allow iPods to work with their OS, Apple will sue and Microshaft will be forced to open their OS even further.
May even get to break Microsoft up into little Microsofts.
CEO of BMW says:” Mercedes sells cars that will ultimately hurt consumers. That will leave consumers no choice! All consumer should buy is BMWs, as long as they buy BMWs, they have choice!” How does the above statement sound guys? Ludicrous!!
The intriguing thing I’d like to know from the tech support calls is who is the customer eventually blaming. Are they blaming MusicMatch for not working with their iPod or are they blaming Apple for not working with MusicMatch. Human Nature being what it is, and as someone pointed out above, cognitive dissonance would make me believe that most people are blaming MusicMatch (eg, “I spent $499 for this player. Don’t you dare tell me that I made a mistake. You’re the stupid ones–not me!”)
Of course, people who got their iPods as a gift might feel differently. (eg, “I just cannot trust my Mom to buy me anything…”)
Strange how many people here are replying, “Too bad for MusicMatch, they should have used AAC/Fairplay.”
Anyone have any evidence MusicMatch, or anyone other than Apple, COULD license Fairplay?
There has been article after article describing Fairplay as Apple’s proprietary DRM scheme. If it isn’t Apple’s proprietary scheme, wouldn’t there have been some challenging of that claim, either by Apple, or more importantly, the owner of Fairplay wanting to license it? In the absence of any of that, it is tough to not believe that Fairplay is either Apple owned or Apple exclusively licensed. More likely the former, since Veridisc or whatever the name was doesn’t even have a domain name, and the IP-address only site is so out of date it doesn’t even mention Apple.
In conclusion, I am making a pronouncement–as of this date, anyone who sloughs off an iTunes competitor with the statement, “They should use AAC/Fairplay” is officially a drooling idiot.
Said pronouncement will be withdrawn upon production of evidence that Fairplay could have been licensed, but wasn’t by choice of the competing site.
If anyone is to blame for screwing up this thing its the recording studios who supported more than one DMR format. AAC/Fairplay is the way to go. Of course the studios don’t mind selling you the same song twice..
Hey, you weenies. You misattributed the quote. The guy who made the “tactical mistake…” comment is Kauffman the MusicNow guy, not the MusicMatch guy. Read it again. The original article has paragraph breaks that make it easier to read.
I expect apologies from the editor and everyone who just made disparaging comments about MusicMatch. Their CEO actually said that they get complaints that WMA files can’t play on the iPod… which is exactly what this crowd wants to hear, right?
Jerk, you’re 100% correct. You can also comb Apple’s financial statements and see no mention of any money paid to Veridisc. And if they’re letting Apple use it for free, just for promotion, then why is everyone so quiet?
There are lots of bad things you can say about WMA–and I’ll agree with all of them–but at least Microsoft is licensing it and letting anybody build a player. Apple is building the iPods for HP (which will put a strain on Apple’s ability to deliver it’s own iPods–something they couldn’t do over Christmas).
I’ve heard rumors that AAC players can play iTMS songs (which might imply that the DRM is stripped when it goes to the player). If someone ever comes out with a $99 AAC player, I might buy one as an experiment. But if other companies take a similar tack to iTunes (ie, strip the DRM but don’t allow people to use their players to transfer music to other computers), perhaps an AAC/Other DRM (AAC/WMA?!) combination could work with the iPod.
Since the vast majority of iPod users shop at the iTMS, that would mean that iTMS would have to support WMA as well, which would effectively kill AAC / Fairplay in the market, as well as give legitimacy to WMA. I don’t see Apple doing this, given their current position as market leader.
I’ll bet that HP will not be the only PC maker to partner with Apple in this way.
As the old Chinese curse goes: “May you live in interesting times.”
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I was searching the net for other references to MusicMatch supporting AAC and found this link- http://clearstatic.org:2396/node/view/300 Sure its from October last year, but surely with the infux of customer complaints he would have realised that there indeed is “any kind of tracition”.
And does anybody have an explanation for this link- http://www.musicmatch.com/info/company/press/releases/?year=2000&release=42 Support for AAC in MusicMatch 6.0? Surely this is some sort of joke