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Technology Stocks : Music Download (AAPL, ROXI, RNWK, AOL, MSFT, AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HerbVic who wrote (24)	9/27/2003 8:46:28 AM
From: Mason Barge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50

Dell currently offers Roxio Easy CD and RealPlayer options, as well as MSFT's Media Player, on its machines. I wonder how this is going to play out, since you know all three of these are going to offer ties to their own music stores. Roxio looks like the easiest one to cut out of the loop as there are other OEM software options. Musicmatch has its own CD burner and there are a lot of good CD burners who don't have competing music stores. I don't see how they could cut out preloading RealPlayer without hurting computer sales at least a tad -- there are a lot of people who resist the Microsoft monopoly and prefer RealPlayer (although this didn't help Netscape that much, did it?). Here, however, you have Microsoft acting even greedier than usual, with its proprietary file formats and refusal to share source code with outside software writers. And what of Microsoft's bundling Windows Media Player with its OS's? I wonder if the Justice Department would allow Microsoft to insist on the OEM installation of its Media Player with the OS? Anyway, it will be interesting to see how much Dell will risk hurting its core business to push MusicMatch, as there is now going to be a degree of overlap between the three services. I don't see how they could NOT preload one or both of RNWK and MSFT's media players. All of the increasing overlap is going to get ugly fast.