Digital Home Thoughts: NeoWin: "MSN Music Review and Interview"

"The last year has seen literally an explosion of entrants into the market, each of them seeking to get a slice of a multi-billion dollar pie. Apple and its iTunes program hit the market first, proving extremely successful and gaining a larger market share; its success was aided in part by the tremendous sales of its music storage product, the iPod. The iPod and iTunes package at the time set Apple apart from other players. Other companies in the market have had varying degrees of success and notoriety. However, strangely, one company held back and waited to see how the game played out : Microsoft."

A great article that features a detailed look at Microsoft's MSN music service, followed by a fascinating interview with Christine Andrews, Lead Project Manager at MSN.

Here is an interesting quote:

Q: "Do you think not having a hardware solution (e.g. iPod) to tie the product in with will be a problem?"

A: "Currently, our partners in the industry already provide consumers with a wide choice of devices. In fact, today our service is supported by more than 70 portable media players, some at half the price of the iPod with longer battery lives."

This is the number one hurdle that Microsoft will face going forward; it doesn't have a product to exploit its MSN music service. It amazes me that no one has yet created a product that rivals the iPod.