Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET

Public Shared Function BrainDump(ByVal dotNet As String) As [Value]

News

<script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-4330602465258980"; google_hints = "ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#, C#.NET, WindowsForms, .NET Framework, VS2005, Visual Studio, XAML, WinFX, Windows Workflow, WPF, WCF, Atlas, NetFX3, Visual Studio Orcas"; google_ad_width = 120; google_ad_height = 240; google_ad_format = "120x240_as"; google_ad_type = "text_image"; google_ad_channel ="4997399242"; google_color_border = "B6C9E7"; google_color_bg = "EFEFEF"; google_color_link = "0000FF"; google_color_text = "000000"; google_color_url = "002C99"; //--></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script>
<!--
-->

You should feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I'm completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever. That said, I will most likely only delete abusive, profane, rude, or annonymous comments, so keep it polite, please.

Blogroll

Cool .NET Articles

My .NET Tools

My Builder.com Articles

My MSKB Articles

I LOVE the new MSN Music Store

The verdict: WAY better than iTunes. I just spent some time surfing the new beta site, and I'm floored. My favorite parts:

  • No client to download. Apple is so hell-bent on lock-in (why the heck is no one complaining about THEIR anti-competitive behavior) that they won't even put their catalog up on a website. At MSN Music, I can browse their catalog of songs, listen to 1 minute clips (longer than iTunes) and buy without having to download a fat client.
  • Huge selection. MSN Music has 31 tracks for Jeremy Camp, iTunes: 4. It looks like the strategy with MSN is to get as many of an artist's songs as possible, versus getting a few songs from a lot of artists. I think it's a good plan.

I think iTunes is very snobby about how it handles it's music business. For once, Microsoft is the one that is open about it, and I think that the downloadable music biz is really going to heat up. I think Real has the right idea with their pricing, but it is up to us to drive down the price of buying music online. Note to all the players: you'll move more songs if it's not still $15 to buy a complete album. I can pay that at the music store, and I get a CD and liner notes too.

Two thumbs up for Microsoft's foray into the music store biz. Now I just need to wait until tomorrow for the Windows Media Player 10 Final.

Posted: Sep 01 2004, 09:53 PM by interscape | with 21 comment(s)

Comments

Jeff Key said:

I buy CDs, so all of this is irrelevant to me; I just find your comments interesting.

- Lock in: There's lock-in on both sides. People aren't complaining about Apple because 1) they aren't Microsoft and 2) they're competing against Microsoft.
- Selection: I beg to differ.

Sea and Cake: iTunes: 72 songs, MSN: 0
Thermals: iTunes: 29 songs, MSN: 0
Tortoise: iTunes: 5 albums, MSN: nothing
Archer Prewitt: iTunes: 4 albums, MSN: nothing
Jesus Lizard: iTunes: 5 albums, MSN: nothing
McLusky: iTunes: 6 albums, MSN: nothing

Ah ha! Finally! MSN has Pedro the Lion. (Seriously, that was the order of stuff I just tried looking for.)

Additional notes:
- I can't listen to MSN samples in FireFox. How come nearly every site on the web works w/IE AND FireFox, yet some of Microsoft's public properties (see MSN Video, et al) don't?
- iTunes samples sound better
- Albums vs songs: I didn't see any non-album songs on iTunes.

Regardless, I'm glad MSFT is joining the fray -- anything to help break down the big corporate music machine.
# September 1, 2004 9:07 PM

Xander Sherry said:

Hmm...Just did a search on iTunes for Jeremy Camp, and got 31 results. It looks like, at least here, the selection is the same for both stores.
# September 1, 2004 11:29 PM

Mikhail Arkhipov (MSFT) said:

Still no uncompressed music.
# September 1, 2004 11:40 PM

TrackBack said:

Lazycoder weblog &raquo; beta MSN Music Store
# September 2, 2004 2:43 AM

Justin Rudd said:

Hm...

Searching on Metallica actually gets 235 results. But there are only 17 songs that I can buy individually. I have to buy the rest as albums.

Oh yeah...the songs that are available individually aren't even metallica. They are remakes by other people.

Not a very good selection of industrial or techno. Classical even seems to be left wanting.

The interface is OK. It would be better if it worked in Firefox. I wonder how long the beta will be?
# September 2, 2004 9:57 AM

Dan said:

> why the heck is no one complaining about THEIR anti-competitive behavior

They're not a monopoly. MS could start their own music store without worry.
# September 2, 2004 10:29 AM

Christopher Gervais said:

Here's what I don't get: why didn't Microsoft make the MSN Music Store a showcase for their client-side .NET solutions? MSN Music Store could have been a showcase app for Microsoft to show the value of rich-client/network-enabled .NET applications. The issue of having a fat client, ala iTunes, isn't lock-in -- it's providing a richer experience than the browser. It's a huge differentiator for Apple's positioning which is to be an end-to-end solution provider. This isn't the same marketing, branding and sales posture that Microsoft is taking with the MSN Music Store. Still, I can't quite figure out why Microsoft didn't use all of their great .NET technology to deliver a nice client app to really challenge the iTunes Music Store...maybe there's something we don't know!
# September 2, 2004 10:32 AM

Dave said:

Odd, all this talk of "lock-in" from you Robert - yet not ONE mention on the proprietary format of the music you can download from the MSN store.

You have some valid points in your obvious bias here. Apple samples are too short. Fat client certainly does have it's disadvantages.

Yet you also have some downright lies too. Availability and size of library for instance. And this glaring oversight on mentioning how you can only download music in a proprietary format...
# September 2, 2004 11:31 AM

Brian said:

[quote]Here's what I don't get: why didn't Microsoft make the MSN Music Store a showcase for their client-side .NET solutions? MSN Music Store could have been a showcase app for Microsoft to show the value of rich-client/network-enabled .NET applications. The issue of having a fat client, ala iTunes, isn't lock-in -- it's providing a richer experience than the browser. It's a huge differentiator for Apple's positioning which is to be an end-to-end solution provider. This isn't the same marketing, branding and sales posture that Microsoft is taking with the MSN Music Store. Still, I can't quite figure out why Microsoft didn't use all of their great .NET technology to deliver a nice client app to really challenge the iTunes Music Store...maybe there's something we don't know! [/quote]
How do you know they are not already using some .NET behind the site? I would bet they are using asp.net...
# September 2, 2004 11:35 AM

Christopher Gervais said:

<i>How do you know they are not already using some .NET behind the site? I would bet they are using asp.net...</i>

My comment wasn't about server-side technology -- I would sincerely hope that Microsoft would be using .NET technologies to build the MSN Music Site. If not, run screaming. If you read my comment I was referring to the client-side of the equation, not the server-side.
# September 2, 2004 11:55 AM

Dave said:

Hmm...If Apple is so snobby and Microsoft is so open, why isn't the MSN Music Store open to Mac users? (Check the minimum requirements...) Last time I checked, iTunes was available on Mac *and* PC. If the situation were reversed -- if iTunes were only available for Mac while MSN could be used on Mac or PC -- I suspect you would be slamming Apple for it.

As for the "huge selection", that's a matter of opinion. Certainly MSN does not have nearly as many tracks available in total as iTunes has. In general, I would prefer to have a broader selection of artists versus having every single track from a relatively small number of artists (and I suspect the majority of the music-listening public agrees with me). If I want an anthology, I'll buy it on CD. (This is all assuming your assertion of greater selection for individual artists is correct to begin with, though others seem to disagree.)
# September 2, 2004 1:01 PM

Christopher Gervais said:

Actually, the most important question is: where are the RSS feeds?! Since the iTunes Music Store provides RSS feeds, I actually interact with the contents of the iTMS via my RSS reader as much as via iTunes. Seems like Microsoft is really about lock-in after all :(
# September 2, 2004 1:35 PM

Andrew Simpson said:

The Microsoft music format may be proprietry, but the iTunes format is even worse. If you buy a song from iTunes, you're stuck with playing it on an iPod. If you want to buy a song from the internet and put it on your iPod, you have to get it from iTunes.

Over in the .wma camp, you can download songs from any music store, and play songs on every device. Well, except iTunes and the iPod. Every other digital music player out there supports both wma and mp3. That's what's meant by the Apple anti-competitive lock-in.
# September 2, 2004 1:50 PM

Christopher Gervais said:

Andrew, let's make sure we're being complete here. If you buy a song from iTunes, you can play it on an iPod, on a Mac, on a Windows machine and burn it to a CD. If you were so inclined, you could then rip the song off the CD and place it on a non-iPod digital music player. You cannot play MSN Music Songs on any device. Only those that support Microsoft DRM and in the future Janus. It's all about choice versus convienence. If the songs were just true WMA, you could play them in iTunes and on the iPod (both support WMA).
# September 2, 2004 1:54 PM

Tim Hitchings said:

>>
Now I just need to wait until tomorrow for the Windows Media Player 10 Final.
<<

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/default.aspx
# September 2, 2004 3:16 PM

Ben said:

Which would you rather be locked into? A $1000 computer, or a $250 portable music player? I think I would rather have the choice of using a PC/ Mac + iPod, rather than only Windows + any WMA portable player. Obviously, it would be better if there were no DRM at all, and the songs worked on all players. If that were the case, I would rather listen to MPEG 4 AAC (vendor neutral) than WMA.
# September 6, 2004 3:27 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 9, 2004 3:42 AM

Jan Peeters said:

Well as a designer I can only choose for iTMS, okay it's a disadvantage that you can only visit there store from within iTunes. But the functionality of the iTMS is done soooo much better. You have direct overview, with the MSN beta it dazzles before my eyes. Okay it's a beta so things can change, but iTMS is a reinvention of the userinterface in a webstoremanner where MSN is just a images above and text below design...
# September 10, 2004 10:56 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 12, 2004 3:31 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 12, 2004 3:32 AM

Zazoo said:

Im a happy mac-user but I'm pretty sure that Itunes doesn't support WMA-files or do I just have to right-click something? Anyways PC-guys yur getting owned by the Maccers :P but I don't really mind...


ITUNES AND MAC RULE!
# September 27, 2004 4:15 PM