Microsoft vs iTunes

Just wanted to pep up this forum a bit. :)

Just was Google Newsing and ran across:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/new....asp?nid=18989

That's rather interesting. I was also unaware of all the other players also making a grab for the online music pie. Among those listed in the article: Amazon, Best Buy, Wal-Mart. I also didn't know iTunes was losing money.

The more the merrier. I'm all for online digital music; I'd stop downloading if I could buy it. (Which I still can't- apparently no one cares for Win98 users.) Online music would be great for me, since I'm not so interested in popular music. It's harder for me to find some other songs online through regular P2P- if I could pay for it I would.

What are your thoughts?

Same deal with me. I have problems finding much of the music I like locally.

Although sometimes I download until I can get the disc I want ordered online, if it's worth it.

I've been purchasing music on iTunes for the past month or soo -- it's no wonder it became profitable from day one -- it's easy to use and affordable. I don't mind paying 99 cents for each song.

I won't use either as I prefer to have a real life copy with cover art, etc.

Does anyone know another service similar to this? I want something like the iPod so I can download stuff from iTUNES onto it. Unfortunately, it's too expensive for me.

MP3 players.

Reccomend any?

I have the Archos Jukebox 20. It's a 20 gig HD basically. It gets the job done, but I'm going to try and move to the iPod just because of file organization. It's a bit difficult on the Archos to find your songs if you have 2000+ of them. The Archos will probably put you back at least a couple hundred. You'd be able to get the 10gig cheaper though.

You're either going to pay sub $100 for an MP3 player with a media card (under a gig), or over $150 for an MP3 player/hard drive.

$150 should be ok, it's not really that much I suppose.

I read about the Archos Jukebox, and it sounded good. Unfortunately a bit expensive for me.

Does anyone have an MP3 player that they could reccomend?