“Software giant Microsoft is casting its sights on the digital media marketplace by positioning itself as pro-consumer-choice. The company unveiled its MSN Music Service and its PlaysForSure logo, which indicates interoperability among portable devices, digital music stores and PCs that run Windows Media software,” Scott Banerjee reports for Billboard.
“‘Obviously, the digital music scenario is exploding,’ said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman/chief software architect at Microsoft’s Digital Entertainment Anywhere launch event Oct. 12 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. ‘Once you’ve picked the music stores you like,’ Gates said, ‘that should in no way constrain the devices the music works with,'” Banerjee reports. “‘We want to give you choice, but we want you to know exactly how that ecosystem fits together,’ Gates said of the PlaysForSure logo. ‘And so you don’t have to think about file formats or conversion, you know that all the richness of the experience will carry across to those devices.'”
Banerjee reports, “‘PlaysForSure is a good way of sorting through the confusion, but there is still a lot of work that consumers need to go through,’ Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research said. ‘It’s not likely consumers are going to go to a music store, look for a particular logo and then go buy a player with that logo on it … By contrast, Apple has a much simpler message; it’s about the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, and by the way, did we mention that iPod?'”
“Apple Computer recently reported that slightly more than 2 million iPods shipped for its fiscal fourth quarter, with iPod revenue for the third quarter totaling $537 million. Revenue from the iTunes Music Store and related iPod services and accessories totaled $98 million,” Banerjee reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: How nice of Microsoft and its partners to clearly identify devices, PCs and music services that won’t work well or at all with Apple’s market-dominating iTunes Music Store (70% of legal online music downloads) and even-more-dominating iPod and iPod mini (92.1% of hard drive-based music players). This’ll make it easier for consumers to avoid making expensive mistakes. They should’ve just called it “Don’tBuyThis.”
this ‘plays for sure’ issue will only become relevant when iPod’s market share slips. Apple cannot suffer from this as long as 90% of the hd-based music players are iPods. End of story. The MS approach is sort of like deciding which car to buy based on where you like to get gas.
On-line music has become a bit of a red-herring in all of this. I have a 20GB iPod and approx. 3% of the music on it is from iTMS. So framing the issue in terms of choice is highly misleading since the iPod works with many of the popular (non-DRM) formats.
This is just an attempt to stigmatize Apple as anti-*consumer* choice, but once you consider the source then the stigma doesn’t really stick.
RE: Mac & PC Guy
“You can believe all you want. The real motive is to make as much money as possible.”
You’d hope so… if it weren’t about making a profit then they’d never do it. Now, you can have ‘some’ intregrity when you make a profit… some companies do… at least Apple ‘appears’ to have some… You can tell by their commitment to the OS, constantly improving… is it all things to all people? No, but it’s a helluva lot better than M$. I choose to use Apple products and support them by paying them money. I am forced to use M$ products.
IMHO
Jb
“the Plays for Sure slogan is just going to be confusing for consumers”
True. But who will they blame for this? If an iPod user buys music from MS and finds it won’t play on the iPod, I think MS is the one who is going to suffer for it, not Apple. The consumer will conclude “burnt once, never buy at MS Music Store again”.
“Anyone got an alternative for WMA? “
How about “Without Mass Appeal”?
I love MDN’s take.
PlaysForSure = IncompatibleFor Sure.
The scary thing about WMA is that they aren’t supporting Mac, so those who use WMA have a really hard time switching to Mac.
WMA
Windows Money Accumulation
Where’s My Audio?
lets all get one brand of player get all our songs from one source. then we can live in my utopia and i will rule over you all
Good ones all! WMA is something to WipeMyAss with. Too bad I won’t have the money to buy an iPod and my computer. Anyone ever see the movie Antitrust? It’s definitely a good parody of Microsoft, even to some of the ways the company strikes back at open-source and gets downright nasty when it’s potential profits are threatened. Not to mention it has Rachel Leigh Cook. Proving once again that hot chicks are usually on the evil side.
“M$ suck at consumer stuff, but they are good at enterprise”
This might be the funniest reply I have ever read at this site. As someone who, sadly, has to manage many MS enterprise systems I can safely say you have this statement backwards. Windows XP is a barely acceptable consumer desktop, but in the enterprise space MS is useless. In the past 3 years I have had 5 large clients run in to signifigant server failures with Windows 2000, 2003 and Exchange 2000, in every case we spent 9+ hours on the phone with MS support, who had no idea why a server that was running fine for (in most cases) years and had no hardware problems just up and died on monring. MS has zero quality at the enterprise level and only have the leverage of the Office monopoly to keep them alive. I replace as many customer systems as possible wit XServers and Linux boxes, using Microsoft products for your business backbone is becoming a bigger joke than before.
Plays For Sure comes on the heal of Micro$ofts “successful” plug and pray program which is now in what,, it’s tenth or so year. ha ha
Looks like Microsoft has just resorted to negative campaining.
?
Great
Just what Apple needed to foster.
Everyone else in the industry lined up on “the other side” becuase Apple wouldn;t license fairplay drm to them so they COULD make devices comptible with the iTunes store.
Apple shut damn near everyone else out so they support MS (whether they want to or not) becuase at least MS WILL license their DRM.
I’d even bet that in 2 years Apple will have been effectively squeezed right out of the market by MS and their billion dollar campaigns to promote their service and their partners products.
Apple will have shot themselves in the foot yet again.
Yaawn.
Whatever. This is music, something M$ is treating instead like commodity for corporation.
“I’d even bet that in 2 years Apple will have been effectively squeezed right out of the market by MS”
doing what? How will you convince people who bought an iPod that suddenly the perfect experience they have is inferior because of MS billion dollar campaign?
What will they have *more* and *better* if the ditch the iPod+iTMS?
Let’s see…
Better priced player? uhmm, hardly so.
Cheaper songs playing better? pleeaaaseee
More artists? foggeddaboutit
This is not the old refrain “on Windows there is more software and costs less, and everyone else have it already”
This is “On Apple iPod+iTMS there is more music and price/quality is best, and everyone else have it already”
In 2 years competitors will have lost so much money that they will beg Apple to license their RDM and Apple, on top of 10 millions iPod sold will comply.
The M$ logo should be honest,
“Plays For Sure On Everything But The iPod You REALLY Want”
but, then, honesty and M$ are incompatible. Honesty is spelled with oldspeak fonts that would make M$’s monopoly crash like a PC.
The goal of Apple is to make the best cool, easy-to-use, secure products– and enough money to continue making them even cooler, easier-to-use, and more secure.
M$ wants to “be” the best by enslaving the greatest number of people to their OS so as to make the greatest amount of money, no matter what– even if their products are increadingly uncool, hard-to-use, and full of security holes.
Eventually, enough people will vote with their wallets regardless of how much money M$ sinks into its various money pits. Where business is shackled to the hugh budgetary constraints of capital hardware and software investments, the individual consumer who has more freedom, once he knows that nothing from M$ plays for sure the way Apple’s products do, will make a choice.
And Apple knows which target market to go after first. Kids can smell hypocrisy upwind, a mile away.
Oh yeah, you lucky bast…s in U.S.A. (and lately U.K., Germany and France).
A lot af countries (35 states in Europe, 25 regions and nations in the former soviet, all nationas nin the middle East and all of the Continent of Africas still do not have any access to iTMS, and that explains why the market share of the iPod in most of the world is to be counted in decimals of percents.
So what’s left for us, the 3rd World, do you think?
Microbe saft, yeah.
And don’t think it’s about 30 percent or such. Out here we face software dictatorship.
It’s M$ – or nothing.
They’re even engaged with the schools and the councils and the administrations out here.
So wake up, all you geeks.
And Apple, in particular, wake up!!!
You still haven’t conquered the world.
So, you’d like a marketshare of 70 percent? And not only in the U.S? Well, come and get it! Don’t just dream or talk. Get goin’!!!
why is everyone afraid to say ‘fuck’?
fuck this fuck that. whatever.
contibutor “freedom of expression”
It’s an overused four letter word, and English is such a rich language. Surely there are better, more accurate alternatives?
However, I must admit to using the “f” word vocally myself � usually on the golf course following a glorious shank � but it’s something I am trying to stop. I never use it in writing.
John
mac_user go take your meds. The Mac community can do without twats like you.
>If you buy something with a “PlaysForSure” logo on it, you should be required to slap a sticker on your forehead that says “PaysForShit.” — Mike
A classic!
why is everyone afraid to say ‘fuck’?
— [freedom of expression]
Because when you type “fuck” — and why the fuck not — then all the computers with parental controls or the search engines with filtering engaged tend to ignore the page. Of course, as soon as someone writes “fuck,” then there’s no fucking point in misspelling it anymore.
mac_user u sound pretty childish i have to say. u are the pot calling the kettle black.
mdn has a cool thing where they dont show you microsoft stories. all you have to do is not click on microsoft stories :p
PlaysFor Sure, the 2nd biggest consumer warning label since Intel Inside??
Such a nice combination of the MS system and a hooker.
The MS system “Paysforsure”
The hooker “Laysforsure”
Potato chips anyone?
Gates is such a donkey – how’d he get so rich?
mac_user: Why are you here? Looking for attention?