cool. I specifically capitalized my previous subject appropriately. Quit trying to be all "Web 2.0" by lowercasing everything, MacNN. Lame.

what a world we live in: "the ipod has been stagnant for 8 months now"

all of 8 months. shame on them! get to work! there are children in the womb who will want a new ipod than the one that was out when they were conceived!

This must be a tax deductable charity I've been hearing Bill has set up.

Well done Microsoft its sounds great on paper... Now just make the dam thing work I don't wanna rent my music and everything needs to be contained within one piece of desktop software. Props if it can access radio streams wirelessly say over WIFI and not just windows means servers shout cast and all including quicktime streaming

what they've done in the past to gain market share? They bought a browser, dumped (by best estimates) couple hundred million into it, couldn't get anywhere against Netscape so bundled it for free. VOILA! History has been made. Netscape died as a company. They've done this over and over and over. They have the bucks to do it.

Isn't giving away free songs in huge quantity's illegal monopoly behavior? I know they do it with the game hardware but there it is a common practice, not so in the music business.

look at the bucks they've lost on the xbox. no other company could do this and survive. but they have the bucks and know they will win in the end. i wouldn't dismiss this out of hand.

There is a problem with all this - there will be no DRM for Mac OS X, just Windows! I could still move my iTunes purchases to my PC at work and then make MS buy them again (assuming its done from a PC). Driving up MS costs is as good as buying from Apple :)

just taught up a lousy name but it already exists. :( http://www.mycropod.com

beat um.... just keep dumping money till you do!!

The MS "iPod-killer" is itself a rumor, which MS (in Apple fashion) refuses to acknowledge or deny. The song-giveaway scheme is a rumor built on the player rumor.

But assuming both are true, I'm sure Microsoft will require purchase of a Microsoft player (and some related ID number) before it will give out the free songs. However, it could still be abused if you load up your iTunes library with your friends iTMS-protected AAC tracks. You won't be able to play those tracks on your Mac, but how will Microsoft's "spy your iTunes library" software know the difference.

Being a PC software company, I can understand Microsoft's tendency to make the PC software end of their "end-to-end" product the centerpiece. But the PLAYER is the most important piece. MS can come up with all the creative plans they want to convert iPod users. It won't matter if the MS player sucks...

If Microsoft is really serious about this stuff, it should:

(1) Design and release a "basic" player as soon as possible. Make it work with the existing Windows Media Player software and existing compatible online stores. That will make some of your "partners" happy.

(2) After refining that product, open your own store, and make that work. Release a special version of the PC interface software that only works with the MS player and MS Store. That will tick off your partners.

(3) After refining the player and PC software, add the "special" features such as wireless and "free songs for iPod converts."

If these rumors are true, it sounds like MS wants to get to the "iPod-killer" product in one giant step. That's not going to happen. They can't even get Vista out the door, and operating systems are Microsoft's core products.

They probably came to an agreement with the record labels that since it can be proven that these songs have already been purchased once that MS can provide matching files with strict DRM for free since its already paid for by the customer and providing them a different DRM copy is not a big deal.

Really quite smart. And it's gonna have a lot of people thinking they are getting a great deal when in reality its just expanding DRM to MS's device and doubling the space of your library if you choose to keep iTunes.

There has got to be something as illegal about that plan as it would be to try to hack the DRM would be. I suspect this is already covered in the EULA and that Apple would vigorously defend themselves as well as prevent it programmatically. And after all, the songs are licensed for use, and not owned by the customer and they can not extend their license to MS this way I wouldn't think.

...the record labels HATE Apple! They'll gladly make whatever arrangements necessary to make this happen as outlined by applenut1 above.

I think its a great idea if it happens this way.

Unfortunately for Apple fans, Apple does have a track record of getting thrown out of the party they start....

Judging by the technology it sounds like PortalPlayer will be assisting MS with their player. What do you think?

somebody needs to work on a spoof so they read about all the songs that you supposedly purchased and then they give you rights to...

First, record companies are all about one, and only one thing. Money. All else is jaw-boning. In business "hate" is a losing proposition, they are a tad smarter than that. The variable pricing thing is a business disagreement. Obviously the record companies think they can increase revenue with vari-pricing (I absolutely think that would be the case), I'd bet you Jobs is sticking to his single price out obstinacy more than anything else (I seriously doubt Apple's business being adversely affect by vari-pricing). I think Apple had much more to lose, but the record companies blinked, and that I do find surprising!

As for the no-cost to m$, no way, no how. As we all know, Fairplay means the ability to write to red book CDs. There's zero incentive for the record companies to simply give the stuff to m$; I suspect there is bargaining going on and maybe m$ will get a reduced rate for "replacement" songs. Take a guess, there are a billion Fairplay songs out there, let's guess on the high side and one quarter will convert. 250 million. Let's say m$ ponies up half a buck per song (I think the fruit ponies up 65-70 cents), that's 125 million bucks.

Total chump change to m$. A FAR better use of marketing dollars than all the ads in the world... think about it. The amount of FREE publicity would be huge. M$ was always about marketing over innovation or technology, so this is very much a m$ move.

Microsoft has something like $35 BILLION in cash. They could pay for every song downloaded and barely notice.