As microsoft prepares to launch its own music download store, entrenched players like Napster and Apple are gearing up for taking on the redmond giant.Apple has a carefully timed announcement adding an affiliate program to iTunes, so that individuals and organizations can get a tiny piece of the pie for every paid download they push on people. The end result, of course, will be to make iTunes' already miniscule margins even smaller. This, obviously, is of little concern to Apple, since they still view the iTunes store (properly) as a promotion for selling iPods. Meanwhile, Napster, fresh from shedding their core Roxio software business appears to be in complete denial about the marketplace.Napster does not think of this move from Microsoft as a real competition Betting it all on Napster and adds that Apple is not in subscription model business and that they should open up the IPOD platform to other services to benefit customers and expand IPOD's reach. |
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