Microsoft Taking On iTunes?
Thursday, January 05, 2006

CES: Microsoft Music Service and Entertainment

Thursday January 05, 2006 01:56 AM EST
Posted by arn

Bill Gates gave his keynote speech at CES on Wednesday night. CNN offers a summary of events of the presentation.

Microsoft unveiled a new music service called "Urge". Previous reports of Urge had revealed that Microsoft and MTV were joining forces for the new music service. The new service launches with over 2 million songs for purchase or subscription-based service. Few other details are otherwise available. The Urge.com site simply says "Coming Soon." Urge will be promoted through their Windows Media Player and appears to be Microsoft's answer to iTunes.

Gates also announced partnerships with Intel and their Viiv platform which will allow users to have more entertainment based machines -- providing DVR functionality and more. Microsoft's upcoming revision to Windows called "Vista" will be the operating system for these machines.

Also mentioned:

- DirecTV Content transferable to Portable Media Centers
- Upcoming HD-DVD support for Xbox 360

Intel's keynote takes place Thursday night and will presumably reveal more information about the Yonah and the Viiv platform. Traditionally, CES has been of limited direct interest to the Macintosh platform, but with the switch to Intel processors taking place, Intel's plans become far more relevant.

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So Microsoft and MTV will be working together to take Apple and iTunes down, not sure if it will happen tho. I will be interested to see what this whole subscription thing will be about, will it be the same as napster with the same price or will they pull a yahoo and come in to undercut the competition. This may also force Apple to role out a subscription plan for its users, I have no doubt its ready to go they are just waiting for the right time to launch it.

People love their ipods and won't give them up for a music service that doesn't work on them. Creative probably thinks they will get more business but design wise Apple wins hands down. Someone has to give and let the world settle on 1 digital rights management software so music and be bought and played on every player but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Posted by mardenhill 1/05/2006 10:00:00 AM    

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