Legal music download services are probably one of the biggest challenges on the internet. Beating spam and virusses might be number one, but selling music to consumers who can also get their music for free seems to be something rather difficult. However Apple seemed to be the first company that really created a succesfull service. Life time competitor Microsoft is now working on a new system that should make legal music download services more attractive.
The Digital Rights Management (DRM) System of Windows Media 9 seems to be the key element in this. Microsofts technology should be flexible enough to be used in download services like Apple is currently offering. However the company is betting on renting music rather then downloading it, and therefor wants to implement a clock in portable music players.
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Time-outs can be supported relatively easily on PCs, which have plenty of memory and processing power to handle a clock and the associated DRM. But supporting clock DRM on small handheld devices poses a considerable engineering challenge, thanks to limited CPU resources and battery life. Usher said Microsoft is working with consumer-electronics device makers to add clocks that can be hooked up to its rights-management system. |
Renting or owning music is of course a big difference, certainly when one has paid for music but is restricted in what to do with the music. However Microsoft is able to use huge marketing budgets and people are using their money to buy stranger things. Read the entire story at BusinessWeek.com...
Source: Businessweek.com
