Whose Music System is Closed, Anyway?

Joe Wilcox | October 20, 2003, 06:16 PM

I've been having quite the chuckle over the amount of space the media has been giving comments David Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division, made last week about iTunes for Windows. I'm not going to rehash the comments. But the quick summary: Mr. Fester basically called Apple's music strategy closed and Microsoft's open.

Really?

OK, I have two questions to ask. If Apple's music approach is so closed, why does iTunes for Mac or Windows include an encoder for ripping quality MP3s? If Microsoft's approach is so open, why does Windows Media Player offer high-quality WMA ripping but the lowest quality for MP3? Last I checked, MP3 is the hugely popular digital music format. Apple's product lets consumers rip high-quality MP3s, while Microsoft's doesn't--without a third-party encoder.

I might point out that companies pay a licensing fee for the MP3 encoder, so it costs Apple money to include the encoder in a music player consumers get for free. From that perspective, if Apple's music strategy were so closed, the company would have a good excuse for only supporting the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format and its own digital rights management technology. As for Microsoft, yes, Windows Media Player does rip high-quality MP3s, but only if some other company provides the encoder. Microsoft doesn't supply that; out of the box, so to speak, ripping to Microsoft's proprietary WMA is the only choice. How open is that?

Part of Mr. Fester's open vs. closed argument had to do with Microsoft's WMA format. He claimed that the other major Windows music services offer WMA content and about 40 devices support the format. Apple's music store, by contrast, just supports iPod. Hence, Apple's approach is more closed, he argued.

That's good FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) but ignores a few things. For starters, the number of devices or services supporting WMA isn't the right comparison to Apple's music strategy. The real issue is how much WMA content do consumers use. MP3 is the undisputed market share leader. Apple has sold 14 million songs in AAC format. How many WMA-formatted songs have consumers bought? That's the fairer gauge of WMA's popularity and so real importance to consumers. I suppose that's a question Jupiter Research could answer with survey data. But, I would love to hear Microsoft's answer on that one, seeing as how a company executive raised the issue.

Mr Fester also picked up on a recurring Microsoft digital media theme: How much content is available in WMA format. So? Stores overstock goods all the time. The question isn't what's on the shelves but what's selling off them. Until recently, most of the so-called WMA music content could be streamed from services like Pressplay, but not purchased. The real test of WMA's popularity is still ahead. Most of the Windows music stores selling WMA-formatted songs are new entities. One major one, Napster 2.0, doesn't open until next week. Over the coming months, we'll see just how many consumers buy WMA songs. If that number is large--and even greater than AAC--then Microsoft would have a compelling comparison to make. One based on facts, I might add.

I won't defend Apple's strategy as being fully open. If consumers buy music in AAC format, they do have only one portable music player to choose from: Apple's. But, consumers also can easily convert their songs to MP3s or burn them to CD. Apple's full MP3 support easily extends portability beyond AAC. So, from one perspective, Mr. Fester was right. But looked at another way, MP3 conversion opens the music to plenty of players. And, last I checked, plenty more music devices support MP3 than WMA.