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Microsoft is preparing to make its first major play in digital content distribution, and it's shaping up to be a full-on assault.
In addition to creating a new audio format to compete with MP3, Microsoft is building a sophisticated backend system into Windows 2000 that will be able to encrypt, manage, and track digital files as they are passed from one user to the next over the Net.
The new audio format, MSAudio 4.0, will be part of an upcoming Windows Media player, which will continue to support MP3 and other popular audio formats.
Gary Schare, lead product manager for Windows media technology at Microsoft, said the new Audio 4.0 format would not be part of the next Media player release, which will piggyback on this week's Internet Explorer launch. Schare would not say when MSAudio 4.0 would make its debut.
Scott Sander, president of Sightsound.com, a company that holds a patent for selling music through online downloads, has consulted with Microsoft on a system for distributing digital music. He said MS Audio 4.0 will create files that are about half the size of MP3 files.
Sander also said the security mechanism that Microsoft is developing in Windows 2000 will work with MP3 and other formats in addition to MSAudio 4.0. In other words, the encryption will be independent from the compression so that as new and better formats are created, Windows will continue to work with them.
"The entire point of the way we're leveraging encryption is that you can transfer files from Mac to Windows to a portable without regard to the compression format. You want it in MSAudio 4.0, fine. MP3, fine," said Sander. "We have been saying this to SDMI [the Secure Music Digital Initiative organization] and everyone, that you must separate the compression from the encryption. It's very much in their [Microsoft's] interest to create an OS that does stuff that consumers want it to do."
