Microsoft’s newly launched MSN Music download service has a long way to go to catch up with iTunes and other online services, competitors say.
Apple Computer Inc., a longtime rival and sometimes partner on Microsoft, said that the world’s largest software maker will have a tough time matching the 16 million songs downloaded every month from its iTunes music store and will be crippled by users not being able to transfer songs onto iPod portable music players.
“It is about the music, the acquiring of music and the listening of music, and how to give customers the best experience of that,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of applications.
Cupertino, California-based Apple also noted that MSN Music, which launched on Wednesday, is offering only 500,000 downloadable songs, half of what iTunes currently offers. Yusuf Mehdi, vice president at Microsoft’s MSN Internet division, said MSN Music would quickly grow to more than 1 million.
“It will be larger than any catalogue,” Mehdi said.
Microsoft is also touting that its songs will be encoded in the Windows Media format at a higher bit rate than Apple’s standard format for iTunes, resulting in better sound quality.
Both offer songs at 99 cents each, although Microsoft is also offering some longer-playing songs above that price, a practice that record companies had been trying to implement. Apple has resisted industry pressure to offer songs at more than 99 cents.
Josh Bernoff, analyst at Forrester Research, said it was still too early to tell how Microsoft would stack up against Apple, noting that MSN Music launched in beta, or test mode.
“It has weaknesses that Apple has pointed out but many of them are going to get fixed,” Bernoff said, “Just because Microsoft’s first offering doesn’t solve all problems doesn’t mean that they won’t be around for a long time or soak up customers.”
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