This summer may see the beginnings of a shake-up in the online-music industry-sources say new Microsoft copy-protection technology will finally arrive, bringing the all-you-can-eat subscription model to portable players. Anticipating the Janus release, MP3 player makers including Samsung have already begun advertising support for the technology in a handful of high-end products. Fans of portable players could then pay as little as $10 a month for ongoing access to hundreds of thousands of songs, instead of buying song downloads one at a time for about a dollar apiece.įew online music subscription plans have enjoyed great success to date, but some music company executives said they believe Janus will make renting music more attractive to consumers and eventually give a la carte download services such as Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store a run for their money.ĭevice makers, too, see the software as a way to take on Apple and its industry-leading iPod player, which for now offers no support for rented music. That in turn would help let subscription services such as Napster put rented tracks on portable devices-something that's not currently allowed. Janus would add a hacker-resistant clock to portable music players for files encoded in Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media Audio format. Sources say the technology-code-named Janus and originally expected more than a year ago-was recently released in a test version to developers and that a final release is now expected as soon as July. Microsoft is expected to unveil copy-protection software this summer that will for the first time give portable digital music players access to tunes rented via all-you-can-eat subscription services-a development that some industry executives believe will shake up the online music business.
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