Read the article: Microsoft’s Dangerous About-Face

[sigh] It seems as though Mr. Gates feels that he must fight fire with fire. According to this article (which is dated July 26, 2006) Microsoft’s new music player/store combo is going to be a closed system, just like Apples iPod/iTues. This means that if you buy MS’s new Zune player (if you haven’t heard about the Zune, check out this article from BBC Business: Zune challenge beckons for iPod) you will only be able to listen to music that you buy from their yet-to-be-released music service, and the player will only be able to play music from that same music service.

“If true, this is huge news that could have huge implications. Just to get started, there’s the impact on the obvious losers: all those music player makers (Creative, iRiver, SanDisk, Samsung, etc.) and all those music services (Napster, Real, Wal-Mart and most especially MTV–who in recent months has been Microsoft’s latest poster-child for partnering, with its URGE music service.) who have based their digital music lives on Microsoft’s PlaysForSure Windows Media standard.”

Do we really need any more closed systems? We already have competing video-game consoles that all have different types of disks, now we’ll have to buy the same song three times if we want to hear it on our MP3 player, computer, and audio-CD car stereo? Even at $0.99 a song I have to ask, WHY? We have been conditioned to accept some things as being closed (the previous video-game console is an example) but music has always been “free” … in the sense that once I’ve bought it I can play it anywhere I want, on any device I want/can. Now that flexibility is being taken away, piece-by-piece.

Quite brilliant, really; they start small, getting one generation hooked on something, then start making it a little more restrictive every few years, until you have a whole population thinking, “This is the way it’s always been.” And we’re shelling out money to buy the same song five times.

[shake head]

I’ll just keep buying CDs and ripping the music myself so that I can listen to my music wherever I want.

This will all just come back to bite MS in the butt anyway. As the article points out:

“…not all music fans feel comfortable buying into a closed system–and most of those that do have probably already begun building their iTunes collections.”

Very true, very true.