Music Ally

Microsoft has taken the wrappers off its new MSN Music service, which will offer UK customers a mix of streaming music and paid downloads. According to the Telegraph, it was due to launch earlier this year, but was delayed to get the details right.

It has to be said, some of those details are… interesting. All four major labels are on board, but the service will only have around one million tracks at launch, and hasn’t signed any deals with independent labels yet. It will offer unlimited streaming, but only to a limited number of “several thousand” customers initially.

Meanwhile, downloads will cost the equivalent of £0.79, but users won’t pay for them directly. Instead, they’ll buy credits first – £7.99 for 10 credits – which are then exchanged for music at a rate of one credit per single, and ten for most albums. Tracks are DRM-free and offered as MP3s or WMAs.

We can’t help thinking that the credits system is an unnecessary extra step in the process, especially if MSN Music is targeted at a mainstream audience who might not be digital geeks. It’s not the first time MSN has done something head-scratching with music though – earlier this year, it launched a mobile music store selling DRM’d tracks for £1.50 a pop that couldn’t even be transferred to a PC or another handset.

Tags: microsoft, MSN Music

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Digital Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.