Samsung bites the bullet: launching its own music service

by Paul Miller, posted Sep 1st 2006 at 2:05PM

They've been playing footsy with their own music download service for a while now, but Samsung has finally announced that they'll be joining the club and will launch a MusicNet-based service this year. Now that Microsoft has practically abandoned PlaysForSure with its Zune offering, it's clear that Apple's iTunes/iPod two-fer model is going to be necessary to compete with the big boys. Unfortunately, that competition won't be taking place in the US for the forseeable future: Samsung plans to launch their store later this year in the UK, Germany and France, with the rest of Europe and Asia to follow. They'll have new players about that time as well, including the sexy YP-K5 -- we just hope they find it in their heart to bestow them on us lowly citizens of the Americas.

Filed under: Portable Audio

Tags: itunes, musicnet, samsung, samsung music service, SamsungMusicService, zune

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Dave @ Sep 1st 2006 2:24PM

Da! Now I can get mein German Techno for cheap!

Neutral

Peter Kirn @ Sep 1st 2006 6:33PM

I'm sorry, but I don't see Microsoft abandoning PlaysForSure just because Zune isn't certified:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?s=playsforsure

Dave McLauchlan of the Windows Media group all but says outright that Zune will support Windows Media subscription stores, and I think with third parties still making devices, PFS remains important. In fact, if anything, a successful Zune could help shake Apple's stranglehold on the market. I don't want to act like I'm drinking the Kool-Aid ... well, okay, I don't think Microsoft drinks Kool-Aid; let's say latte ... but there are plenty of reasons to believe this.

Furthermore, I don't think there's any reason to believe that manufacturers going off and building their own second-rate connectivity and store will help. (Ahem, Sony.)

MS never said anything about PFS other than Zune wouldn't be certified; blogs have just assumed the rest, and perhaps not correctly so.

Neutral

pets lover @ Sep 2nd 2006 2:59AM

hey.. I dont like this player design...!

Neutral

matchmaking services @ Sep 2nd 2006 5:39AM

Marketing, marketing, marketing. To win over the american crowd they will need an outstanding marketing compaign.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.