Apple's music: Microsoft's sour note?

Apple Computer's new music service could help shift the battle to control digital media away from Microsoft's proprietary file formats, according to analysts.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple on Monday launched the new service, which makes a catalog of about 200,000 songs from all major record labels available for download to a computer. Liberal licensing terms mean the songs also can be burned to CDs or moved to portable music players, such as Apple's iPod. Apple charges an average of 99 cents per song.

While some record labels have called the music service an "experiment," analysts see huge potential for Apple to stall or potentially derail Microsoft's own digital media strategy if, as expected, it brings the service to Windows as well as the Mac.

News source: C|Net