Napster Points a Finger at Microsoft
March 2, 2006
From PaidContent.org, I learned that Napster CEO Chris Gorog “blames the Microsoft partner device makers and Microsoft for Napster’s inability to make great strides in its battle with Apple’s iTunes.”
My recent experience tells me Naspter is right to be frustrated with Microsoft, but I don’t blame the device makers as much as Gorog does. So I offered the following comment over at PaidContent.org:
I just spent the better part of a couple of days dealing with a Napster/Microsoft DRM/Creative Zen Micro problem. It began with a hiccup in my son’s Napster account, and after essentially zero help from the Napster technical support team, it took an excellent technical support engineer from Creative to walk me through a labyrinth of Microsoft DRM upgrades and driver changes. The upshot was that I _still_ had to reinstall the Creative firmware and resynchronize the device with my son’s Napster library. I was left convinced that the real culprit was the Microsoft DRM technology _and_ how it is implemented in the Napster client.
So there is plenty of guilt to go around here, but let’s not forget that Microsoft has a long and famous history of not dealing well with third-party devices. This goes back to the earliest days of Windows. So if Microsoft intends to be a serious player in the music and entertainment business, it needs to master this requirement of its operating systems.
Posted by Bill Trippe at March 2, 2006 4:46 PM
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I spend most of my days now backing up data--a lot of it in the "iTunes Music" folders--and then reformating and reinstalling XP for home users and parents. I have yet to have a problem accessing iTunes data, and have yet to reintegrate WMA files that have been protected. The MS pages on this subject first tell you how to back up your license keys, but then warn you that you won't be able to do anything with them if you have to reinstall. MS DRM is totally useless.
Posted by Ron Gustavson at March 3, 2006 3:15 AM