Friday, November 03, 2006

Beginning November 14th, 2006, MSN will no longer offer music downloads through the MSN Music store. The "Buy" buttons that you are used to seeing on the MSN Music album and artist pages will change to links that connect you to Zune and Real Rhapsody.

On November 14th, Microsoft will launch Zune, our exciting new digital media player. MSN will partner with the Zune team to make it simple for MSN Music users to find and download music from the new Zune Marketplace. The Zune Marketplace will enable you to purchase tracks individually or to buy a Zune Pass subscription to download as many songs as you want for a flat fee. (A current Zune Pass is required to continue accessing downloaded music.)

Yikes. MSN Music Closes Shop
Just two years after trumpeting the service as the future of online music, Microsoft this week announced that it was shuttering MSN Music for good. Now, the site will simply redirect music purchasers to either the Zune Marketplace or RealNetworks' Rhapsody service (the latter of which isn't even based on Microsoft's Windows Media platform). "After November 14, the 'Buy' buttons that you're used to seeing on MSN Music album and artist pages will change to links that connect you to Zune and to Real Rhapsody," Microsoft's Rob Bennett wrote in an email message to MSN Music customers. While Apple fanatics will no doubt cheer this victory, the truth is, MSN Music was a decent offering with extremely high quality music (twice as good as Apple's offering) and a nice interface that was usable from both a Web browser and Windows Media Player. In any event, Microsoft says customers who purchased songs from MSN Music will be able to continue using them as before.