Veerle's blog

I just read this in an article (on CBS) that analysts say that iTunes for Windows may be just the thing for fans, it may be coming too late for the broader market. There are already similar services for Windows users, such as MusicMatch, already entrenched and another called BuyMusic.com. File-swapping service Napster has resurrected itself as a pay service, now under a parent company, Roxio Inc. BuyMusic.com went as far as to borrow the style of Apple’s humorous once with actors singing along with their music player against a white backdrop in their television commercials. What a nerve they have!

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Eugene Munster thinks that Napster with its 92,5% brand-recognition has the best shot of making it (source U.S. Today). Those 92,5% comes from the time that Napster was at its peak popularity and was free! The hard part will be convincing people that those free days are over but that it is still the worlds greatest music community. The only thing that will happen is that people might come an take a look but get them buying will be a whole other story. For starters Napster isn’t compatible with iPod, still the worlds best MP3 player according to several PC magazines and in my book that’s a strong selling point.

I wonder, if these similar services are already so successful and they have millions of customers leaving no room for iTunes as these analysts imply, then why we never heard of any press release of figures, facts, amounts of downloads etc. ? I will tell you why, because there aren’t any great figures to release. Like usual the analysts are the first to say that it will be a no-go but mark my words, I’m thinking that iTunes on Windows will be as popular on PC as it is on Mac now. But that doesn’t make up the fact that I still CAN’T access this because I’m in Europe :-( Europe, 1 unity? Huh!? Great joke :-(

On Thursday October 16th we will know what Apple has in its sleeve, because Apple has planned a music event with the invitation title “The years biggest music story is about to get event bigger"…