What's music coming to?

Apple's iTunes is just about to have a new 800-pound gorilla of a competitor, and it may be sign of things to come for music fans in every household. "Microsoft plans to quietly launch the MSN online music store with the new version of its Windows Media 10 player," the San Jose Mercury News reports. Some 130 million PC owners will be introduced to the store, MS says, when they're prompted to update their media player software. "That's not counting the 300 million people who drop by the MSN site. The software giant also touts the music store's compatibility with nearly 60 digital music players. Not included in the list is Apple's popular iPod." The Windows Media system will use MS's new "Janus" digital rights management (DRM) technology, and it's Janus that gives us a window on what consuming music could be like in the future. In a commentary, The Register suggests Janus is all about control. "Janus was the Roman god of doors, and had two faces.... Janus here faces two ways, smiling warmly and solicitously at the content owners and vendors, and somewhat less convincingly at the consumer." On the one hand, Janus is designed to make the music subscription services like Napster work better with people's MP3 players (to the music industry, that probably spells less use of the free file-sharing services).

On the other hand, it also potentially reduces music fans' freedom. "Imagine," The Register continues, "a world where the flexibility of being able to buy a CD then play it where you like had been finally stamped out, where it was becoming 'illegitimate' to let your friends hear stuff you think they might be interested in, and where 'home taping' was getting progressively harder. And imagine a world where there was no online equivalent of the 'buy, rip, play where you like' model that's currently available to you. And sure, in that world people won't be able to grab whatever they want without paying for it from file-sharing networks.... It enables a New World Order where the content companies can impose a significantly more restrictive regime on consumers without negotiation." There are alternatives, The Register points out in a footnote worth noting.