Microsoft Music Store and Window Media 10 This Week?

The new MSN Online Music Store is rumoured to appear this week, along with a new version of Windows Media Player.

Since Windows Media Player’s 100 million or so users will need to update their player shortly, what better opportunity to introduce them to a new music service?

The Microsoft online store is expected to carry the industry standard one million tracks when it launches, having signed deals with the big four labels. Early screen grabs of the service, now out of date, pay homage to iTunes in look and feel. Pricing is also expected to be similar to iTunes and Napster. So expect the European and UK stores to cost more.

Microsoft claim that the service will be compatible with about 60 music players, with even better functionality promised for Janus-compatible players when they start to appear.

Needless to say, we’ll be signed up and testing as soon at the store hits the web.

It’ll be linked off MSN when it launches

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?