Microsoft Music: coming soon
p2pnet.net News:- Looks like by the end of the year, it might all be over bar the shouting – we’ll be up to our ears in corporate junk (oops, sorry, music) stores all selling the same mass-produced, homogenized Big Five downloads at the same inflated prices.
Having just announced the iPod Killer, Bill and the Boyz now say they’re going to follow through with plans they mooted last summer to get into the online music store business with a Windows Media Player site.
“As others rush to match the success of Apple, which sold 5 million songs online in the first two months of store operation, it appears the [Microsoft] Windows market will soon be quickly crowded with downloadable music stores,” says CNETÂ here.
It’s already crowded. But five million is zip and the 100 million tracks Apple’s Steve Jobs hoped would be sold through iTunes by the end of April will fall short of target, not that it matters because the numbers touted by the corporates are meaningless anyway, compared to what’s happening in the real world of online music.
There, four million simultaneous users are logged on to p2p networks at any given moment, and around one BILLION (1,000,000,000) files are shared every month, says Eric Garland, ceo of Big Champagne.
Moreover, p2p file sharers have music from around the world to choose from, not just the same, wizened tracks – all 250,000 / 500,000 of them – proffered by the Big Music-backed online stores at a dollar a download.
In the meanwhile, al la Jobs, who’s always admitted iTunes is a loss leader, “Responding to questions at an analyst meeting here Thursday, [Bill] Gates indicated that any music store project would be more a matter of providing computer users with added convenience – and presumably, keeping people using Microsoft software – rather than a direct moneymaker,” says CNET.
Gates was also quoted as saying, “It’s maybe a feature your platform should offer, but it’s not like you’re going to make some (big) markup.”
Yeh. But maybe we should start our own IndieNet anyway.
The giant Corporate Greed Club members are shoving and muscling each other around as they try to gain dominant positions.
But for us, it’s like being trapped in the middle of a herd of lobotomized elephants. Scary and dangerous. Because they don’t care how many crops they ruin or who they trample as they try to get their way.
