p2p news / p2pnet: AOL and Microsoft are trying to ease themselves into what they’ll no doubt end up billing as p2p, corporate style, and under their schemes, if you’re the average person in the street, you’re going to swallow music subscriptions, like it or not.

Both companies have bought ‘file sharing’ services, Microsoft as part of its revival of Live Software, as it calls its attempt to grapple with the Google menace by hogging the Net, and AOL, whose Steve Case has left the fold, just to become relevant.

‘Subscription’ means you rent mp3 tracks for a monthly fee and when you stop paying – ie, if you’re a student who’s using one of the ’services’ being forced on universities and other schools – you lose the music you paid for. It stops. Dead.

AOL has bought something called MusicNow, a subscription service from Circuit City Stores, and Bill and the Boyz are now the proud owners of FolderShare, a “a leading service in the emerging space of file synchronization and remote access technology that helps customers access information across multiple devices”.

AOL already has a long-standing deal with Circuit City under which Circuit City which made AOL its “preferred service provider, promoting it in print and advertising campaigns, as well as other promotional programs”.

Enter AOL Music Now, a, “blend of AOL’s existing subscription music service, MusicNet, with MusicNow, a Chicago-based company that AOL purchased this week from Circuit City Stores,” says Online Media Daily. Financial details weren’t disclosed.

AOL’s digital downloans will go out at the usual $1 each, and ’subscriptions’ will cost $10 to $15 a month, says the story.

Microsoft says its “mission for Windows Live is to enable customers to easily find the information, pursue the interests and deepen the relationships that enrich their lives” Accordingly, Microsoftee Blake Irving is, “thrilled with the acquisition of FolderShare and the opportunity to offer this technology with Windows Live software and services”.

Launched in 2002, FolderShare used to be and owned and operated by Austin, Texas-based ByteTaxi Inc. Financial details weren’t disclosed here either, and Irving didn’t say how much Microsoft will expect people to pay.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi

Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.

See:-
Google menace - Microsoft’s ‘new’ direction, November 2, 2005
left the fold - Case departs from AOL, November 1, 2005
Online Media Daily - AOL To Sell Music Downloads, November 4, 2005
FolderShare - Microsoft Acquires FolderShare, November 4, 2005

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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