iTunes vs. Windows Media Player

Hi 0crr,
iTunes has a 70% (and growing) market share and has been making a profit for some time now. All other music services use an incompatible file format and are losing large amounts of money because they lack economy of scale. If you want to buy music, it would be prudent to pick a file format that won't become obsolete when your music supplier folds.

All music players (except some Sony units) will support MP3 file format as a lowest common denominator--but MP3 won't sound as good as AAC or WMA. The AAC file format used in iTunes complies with open standards set by the MPEG4 trade organization. The WMA file format used by Napster and others does not comply with MPEG4 standards, and is a proprietary format being pushed by Microsoft.

Besides the way the music is stored (MPEG4-compliant or proprietary file structure), there are also differences in the way that musician's intellectual property rights are being protected. In general, iTunes gives you more flexibility in terms of you can enjoy your music--how many computers you can store your music on, how many music players, how many playlists you can make, whether the copies are high quality AAC files (as opposed to lower quality MP3), etc. But because iTunes is the only software supporting that Digital Rights Management (DRM) approach, it is sometimes called "proprietary" while the various flavors or Microsoft DRM are called "open".

There is third-party software that will convert between WMA, AAC and MP3 file formats. It works, but the results won't sound as good as if you had downloaded the music or made the file straight from a CD.

Brad

Hello Brad,

I posted a more condensed question (lacking the Pocket PC portion), as my first question seemed to contin two questions (itunes vs. wma + itunes vs.pocket pc).  My condensed question was deleted as a duplicate question.  I'd like to award you  points for having answered the elements regarding the comparitive features of the two formats and ask a few follow ups (in a few hours after I'm done... working :p  )

Thanks again!

Occ...

Can songs bought from microsoft's online service be played with the iTunes player?

Can songs bought from the iTunes store be played with the Windows Media player?

0crr,
1) You are not permitted to award me points because there is a maximum of 500 points per question (including any "Points for" questions that follow). You had already accepted an Answer before I posted my first Comment. So I knew going in that there were no points on offer for my comment, and I have no regrets on this issue. And as a Page Editor, I'm responsible for enforcing this rule.

2) Songs bought from Microsoft's service will be in WMA format and cannot be played on an iPod or in iTunes. MP3 music and unprotected songs in WMA format will be imported into iTunes automatically. Songs bought from the iTunes store will be in AAC format and cannot be played in Windows Media Player.

Apple has over 90% world-wide market share for music players using a hard drive, and 70% market share if you include the smaller players using flash memory. They have over 70% market share of the market for legal music downloads, despite being authorized to sell music in only 22 countries. Competing manufacturers of players are either losing money or making a small profit. Competing sellers of on-line music are all losing money. Unless Apple blunders by allowing sizeable profits to be made by small market-share competitors, I expect most of the competitors to abandon the business. Napster, Real Network, Creative and Rio are already considered "beleaguered" by the US business press.

What could change things is a switch from carrying both a cell phone and an iPod to carrying one device that does both jobs well. So far, the competing hardware isn't even close and the cellular carriers in the US think that the privilege of carrying music on your phone is worth $3.00/song versus $0.99 for iTunes or Microsoft music store.
Brad