[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by James Fee

If Napster or Musicmatch had really taken it to Apple, there would be less incentive to run with MSN Music.

True, but I suspect neither will be all *that* pleased with MSN.
And I *know* Real will be ticked.
But they've already sued so the only thing they can do is amend the suit. ;-)

In a way its sad that the market hasn't taken better notice of Musicmatch or, conversely, they haven't marketed it better.
It is a pretty good system with some real nice features(front-end software issues aside); the Media Center version in particular is a very good idea.
And their back-end is well thought out.

But as you said, in a year they have made no traction against Apple and it is not in MS interests to be excluded from any market. They don't need to dominate, but they do have to be a player.

At least this is a fight they go in with hundreds of allies; namely every last manufacturer of digital music players who can't get Apple to license them Fairplay. So they *really* have to screw this up big-time *not* to be a player. 8)

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by James Fee

If Napster or Musicmatch had really taken it to Apple, there would be less incentive to run with MSN Music.

True, but I suspect neither will be all *that* pleased with MSN.
And I *know* Real will be ticked.
But they've already sued so the only thing they can do is amend the suit. ;-)

In a way its sad that the market hasn't taken better notice of Musicmatch or, conversely, they haven't marketed it better.
It is a pretty good system with some real nice features(front-end software issues aside); the Media Center version in particular is a very good idea.
And their back-end is well thought out.

But as you said, in a year they have made no traction against Apple and it is not in MS interests to be excluded from any market. They don't need to dominate, but they do have to be a player.

At least this is a fight they go in with hundreds of allies; namely every last manufacturer of digital music players who can't get Apple to license them Fairplay. So they *really* have to screw this up big-time *not* to be a player. 8)

[James Fee]

Originally Posted by Felix Torres

At least this is a fight they go in with hundreds of allies; namely every last manufacturer of digital music players who can't get Apple to license them Fairplay. So they *really* have to screw this up big-time *not* to be a player. 8)

Very true. If I have a WMA compatible player, this is great news. Finally they might have a music store that can start selling the players. It will be interesting to see what kinds of marketing deal are made with companies. Will there be a "prefered" player?

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by James Fee

If I have a WMA compatible player, this is great news. Finally they might have a music store that can start selling the players. It will be interesting to see what kinds of marketing deal are made with companies. Will there be a "prefered" player?

Probably not, since the idea of the MS approach is to enable diversity with compatibility, but if they were to choose a flagship, it would likely be a PMC, no?