Microsoft joins the Milk Online Music club

From today, people in western Europe can download from 200,000 songs by 8,500 artists - without risking the Wrath of Hollywood.

But it's not one of the Big Five or Apple or anyone else in the music business who's the latest to belly up to the 'legal' online music trough.

This time, Miscro@soft, with its Windows Media Player as The Means, and Peter Gabriel, via his OD2, as The Man, is offering downloads for about $1.20 cents each.

"The expanded MSN Music Club service will be launched today in the United Kingdom," says MS in a statement. "Tiscali, which has Tiscali Music Clubs in operation in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium, will launch the new versions of its service in September.

"Both services are based on a simple pay-as-you-go model, enabling music fans to download individual songs starting from just £0.75 (€0.99) per track, or £7.99 (€12.49) per album."

Apple has struggled to launch iTunes in Europe because it's been, "held up by the need to obtain licences from record labels and publishers' central clearing houses in each individual country," says a story in Britain's online Financial Times.

The FT points out that iTunes is seen as a breakthrough product by the music industry, but that Micro$oft is after a much bigger market, with 96% of computers in Europe running the Windows operating system.

But, "Brussels is investigating whether the inclusion of Media Player with the operating system gives Microsoft an unfair competitive advantage," says the story. "A European Commission spokesman said on Wednesday this would remain the focus."

It added that Micro$oft wouldn't comment on when it plans to launch a similar music download service in the US, "but as many as six Apple rivals are expected to launch competing online music stores for PC users in the US by the end of the year".