Quote:
Originally Posted by Vincent M Ferrari
Unless I'm completely wrong and somehow a music company managed to bring a company with 85% of the OS market share to its knees, Microsoft gave in to Universal with their per-device fee in order to make it more expensive for the people they're competing against to carry Universal's music.
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That's one theory, but how about this one: the Zune is an underdog in a fairly mature market massively dominated by an entrenched player, and they needed Universal and their music catalogue more than Universal needed the Zune Marketplace as a revenue generator for their music. In fact, Universal probably couldn't give a crap about the Zune because they know it will take years before the Zune is selling in significant numbers that Universal would be losing out on any significant revenue opportunities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm ticked off at the idea that I'm a music pirate because I bought a Zune, but from a business standpoint, how much WORSE would the reviews of the Zune be if the Zune Marketplace didn't have any music from Universal's catalogue? You know full well the reviews would have been even worse, slamming the Zune Marketplace for lacking music from one of the biggest players in this arena. People are always slamming the Zune Marketplace because it only has 2 million tracks instead of the 3.5 million that iTunes has (or whatever).
Also, we have to keep this in perspective - if Microsoft hits their goal of selling 1 million units this year, that's only $1 million it's going to cost them. That's not a big sacrifice for the Zune team to make in order to get access to popular music they needed.
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