Sony Plans European Ad Blitz to Stifle iTunes
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Sony Corp. next week will launch a marketing blitz in Europe for its new Connect music download store, its latest effort to derail the runaway momentum of Apple Computer's iTunes service.
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Edging cautiously into the water where Amazon, Apple's iTunes, eMusic and other services are already frolicking, Sony BMG Music has announced plans to offer a tiny set of DRM-free tracks online... if you go to one of their brick-and-mortar stores first.
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Apple is teaming up with Coca-Cola in  Europe to give away about 70 million songs on its  market-leading iTunes Music Store -- more than a third of the  total number of songs it has sold there to date.
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BERLIN: Apple Computer Inc is planning the next wave of expansion for its popular iTunes online music store with a multi-country European launch in October, the services chief architect said on Wednesday.
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On the eve of the announcement of a new Europe-wide consumer protection program, whose stated aim is to ensure consumers' ability to return products purchased online for refunds if they're not satisfied -- regardless of what country they were purchased from -- the lead architect of that program, EU Commissioner Meglena Kuneva, hinted to the German newsweekly Focus that Apple's iTunes service could be directly impacted.
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Independent music companies are launching a legal challenge to the European Union&#39;s decision to allow the merger of Sony and Bertelsmann (BMG).
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Microsoft Corp.&#39;s MSN Music online download service fired another salvo this week at Apple rival iTunes Music Store by announcing its expansion into new European countries.
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Apple bears the ultimate responsibility for making iTunes compatible with rival music players, says the agency leading a European effort to make it happen. By the Associated Press.
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Sony's first digital audio players to support MP3 files have been released in Europe in a significant change in strategy.
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European antitrust regulators worry that Microsoft could dominate the burgeoning market for digital rights management software
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An Apple executive has told Reuters that the company will expand its European iTunes Music Store next month. Apple Vice President Eddie Cue told the news service that Apple plans to cover
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p2pnet.net News:- Europeans will be able to buy a leaned-down version of Microsoft Windows, stripped of its music and video player, and the company will have to license out secret information to its competitors.
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Sony positions itself to squeeze Apple The newspapers were full of stories during 2004 about how Microsoft or RealNetworks or Napster were going to knock Apple's iTunes off its perch, and time and time again, nothing really happened. Now we have the reverse.â¦
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European consumers want music not video or games on their portable gadgets. According to Jupiter Research only a lowly five per cent of people would like a music player which could also play films.
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Microsoft Corp launched its MSN music  download service in eight new European countries on Thursday in  an attempt to fend off a recent expansion push by archrival  Apple Computer's iTunes.
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Apple&#39;s iTunes store currently has coverage in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
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(InfoWorld) - Just because three major online music retailers bind their music stores to specific portable players doesn't make it acceptable, a Norwegian consumer group leading the charge against Apple's DRM (digital rights management) policy says. "ITunes Music Store and others are unfair to consumers no matter how many download services follow the proprietary approach," wrote Torgeir Waterhouse, a senior advisor at The Norwegian Consumer Council, in response to a letter written by Apple CEO Steve Jobs andÂ posted on the Apple Web siteÂ on Tuesday. Jobs examined why DRM exists and discusses alternatives to the current set-up in his open response to calls for Apple to allow users to buy songs from the iTunes store and play them on any device. Norway's consumer representative hasÂ threatened legal action against AppleÂ for violating Norwegian law by limiting iTunes customers to playing their music only on iPods. Consumer groups in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, and Germany haveÂ joined Norway's complaintÂ against Apple. Jobs points out that Microsoft and Sony also sell music that can only be played on their players, supporting a model that serves customers well with choice and a continuing stream of innovative products. He also suggests that groups like Waterhouse's "redirect their energies" toward convincing the music labels to sell music without DRM, technology that aims to restrict how buyers can copy or use the music. The four biggest record labels forced Apple to employ a proprietary DRM system as a condition of the agreement that allows Apple to sell their music, he said. Ideally, he said, the labels wouldn't require DRM. "This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat," Jobs wrote. While Waterhouse agrees that the record companies carry some fault for the situation, the iTunes music store and others like it are ultimately responsible. "They're still the company that's selling music to the consumers and are responsible for offering a fair deal according to Norwegian law," he said. Still, with his letter, Jobs' appears to have stirred up some additional pressure on the record labels to change their DRM policies. EMusic.com Inc., which claims to be the second largest music download site, only sells DRM-free music from thousands of independent labels. But the site would like be able to sell music from the four biggest labels. "We are hopeful the remaining four will one day join [the independent labels] by licensing their complete catalogs and reap the benefits of consumer demand," David Pakman, president and CEO of eMusic, wrote in a response to Jobs' letter. Even though Jobs didn't hint that a solution might be impending, Waterhouse appeared to see a glimmer of hope. "If this means that Apple is willing to the kick the lock in technology from the [iTunes/iPod] combination this is really good news -- news that should be put into action as soon as possible to bring us all one important step closer to a well functioning digital society," he wrote.