" Can anybody Catch Itunes?"

Wall Street Journal 11/27/2006
The Technology report R1
article " Can anybody Catch Itunes?"

Concerning legal digital music,Microsoft, Yahoo and others are not going after Apple and iTunes but the part of the market that has not signed up yet (for a variety of reasons).
No2 Emusic wants to get people who still shop for CDs by offering CD like packages. The other companies are trying to go indirectly to thwart Apple. iTunes has 72% of the online song market (makes Apple #4retailer of music in any form) while eMusic has 10%. Apple owns 75% ofthe mp3 player market.At 3% tie for 4th in digital musicmarket.
Realnetworks , Sandisk Corp and Best Busy are 1,2,3.

Download sales have been lackluster. Other companies can only download with software that is non Apple which has its own (copy protection scheme) software which Apple does not let others use.

eMusic sells unprotected music which can be played on any mp3 player including the iPod. The lack of protection means that eMusic cannot carry major music label artists which Apple garnered with groundbreaking deal with its Music store.

Other companies on the hunt are yahoo music, Napster, Realnetworks Rhapsody and Microsoft Zune ( mixed reviews lately with it being bulky, and can't use television shows and movies like iTunes. Microsoft and Zune are trying to capitalize on the music sharing capability which it says that is the personal element that has been lost with Apple.


(We shall see. But I don't agree with that statement. What makes music personal is that people can make their iPod their own mp3 player and a flexible one at that . The imix and being able to let people "see " their mixes, people can see and buy what others people like. I do not like the subscribe by monthly addition that some of these companies use (don't continue to pay you lose the music). Now if Apple had a monthly prescription that would be great. But I don't buy that many CDs in a year or a month. What does everyone else think?


Dr. Eric Flescher, Olathe, KS(dreric1kansas@aol.com): DrEric1MacNews/Macsightings Blog : http://dreric1macnewsmacsightings.blogspot.co