Microsoft Plans to Launch a Music Streaming Service

[engine]

Microsoft Plans to Launch a Music Streaming Service [telegraph.co.uk]

The service, which Microsoft aims to have ready by the end of July, will offer users the chance to stream music for free and also download to own.

Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN, Microsoft's news and entertainment portal, told The Telegraph exclusively: "Music is an important area for Microsoft. We are looking at launching a music streaming service imminently."

[edited by: encyclo at 1:49 am (utc) on July 14, 2009]

[weeks]

The headline said it will be similar to Spotify. Huh?
Oh...
[spotify.com...]

[J_RaD]

^
spotify

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions we are not yet available in your country. We understand that you are currently in United States

[sgietz]

Hmmm, this Spotify thing sounds interesting. Of course it's not available in the U.S. because of licensing issues. When will the music industry learn?

:(

Edited to add:
So will the MS service be available in the U.S.?

[asas111]

Do you guys notice how big companies are launching big products and services day after day. Even they can't keep up with their own offerings: Google Wave, Chrome OS, Android, MS Music, MS Windows 7, Bing, Facebook updates, COnnect and so much more.

Competetion is fearce, you have to keep coming up with new ideas and proucts, otherwise you will be AOLized/AlltheWeED/MySpaced

[JS_Harris]

I bet if I download the song "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica the service will get slapped with a suit faster than Napster did. Microsoft doesn't have rights to any music as far as I know.

edit :asas, sure did notice and smaller webmasters can outrank the sloppy big boys offerings quite handily right now.

[dudibob]

Sounds interesting and surprised M$ haven't gone back to their roots for this one and just bought Spotify.

End of July is coming close and really surprised we haven't heard more about this as that's over 2 weeks away and their still reviewing this? Doesn't make sense, unless they buy Spotify lol

[sgietz]

Well, I believe that streaming copyrighted music is perfectly legal (think radio station), although, it's quite easy to record a stream (radio again).

[incrediBILL]

What's interesting is Yahoo did this same business model and it went down in flames.

Of course Yahoo didn't have it's own Zune player, but they still failed miserably.

I'm only buying real MP3s after the Yahoo fiasco, no more DRM, and Amazon sells 'em cheap.

[centime]

Curious, I wonder why. they already have the operational msn music download service.It also does streaming.

No advert funded free listening though, just samples

[civgroup]

Why don't they just buy Pandora?

[SwitchFX]

Is Microsoft compensating for the 'smaller' things in life this year? This press release is a joke. First comes along Bing, which really isn't good. Search for something using a basic search term, and it'll bring something up that's on the complete opposite side of the spectrum you were wanting to look at.

@ civgroup

Why don't they just buy Pandora?

Because Pandora is a failed service, IMHO. The algorithm it uses to tell users what music matches their taste isn't as great as Last.FM. Pandora also has a very limited number of international artists (who sing in English) in their database, whereas Last.FM does not. Not to mention slow server response times, music glitches. It's just too much work.

[edited by: SwitchFX at 10:35 pm (utc) on July 14, 2009]

[kaled]

Well, I believe that streaming copyrighted music is perfectly legal (think radio station)...

In the UK, a standard royalty payment is required for each record played. I presume is works in much the same way around the world. For streaming, payment is typically required per stream - youtube recently renegotiated its prices for UK-copyrighted music but I can't remember the price - something like .02p each I think.

Kaled.

[SwitchFX]

youtube recently renegotiated its prices for UK-copyrighted music but I can't remember the price - something like .02p each I think.

I thought they didn't want to negotiate a few months ago. Has YouTube changed their tune now?