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Music is a little different because you don’t need proprietary hardware in order to listen to music. Everything plays an MP3. A CD is a CD and all CD players pl
by Forgeties79 4y ago
Music is a little different because you don’t need proprietary hardware in order to listen to music. Everything plays an MP3. A CD is a CD and all CD players play CD’s.
With console video games, you can’t just pop the game disc into any disc tray that plays games. You can’t run your downloaded Xbox game on the PlayStation. The thing you licensed (since we don’t own them technically) is tied to proprietary hardware.
Imagine if you had to own a Mac in order to listen to your music you bought on iTunes/Apple Music
- Animats 4y agoMicrosoft tried that with Zune.[1] It was unpopular. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/support-for-rights-managed-purchases-in-zune-69161d07-acae-1fdf-f98f-e0916758e49b https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/support-for-rights...
- Forgeties79 4y agoMan I remember that. Great device if you wanted to tinker, terrible music store.
- hiptobecubic 4y agoBoth of those formats require(d) licensing didn't they?
- Forgeties79 4y agoNot from the consumer, just the manufacturers. As a consumer you bought a piece of hardware that could read the format and it worked across-the-board. With Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo, you buy the game and not only is it linked to the format, but it’s actually linked to their proprietary hardware. You can’t buy an Xbox game, which is exactly the same as the PlayStation version, and play it on the PlayStation. But I can buy a song online on my Mac and play it on VLC on a Windows machine. Imagine if any music I buy on bandcamp could only be played via a bandcamp app or software on bandcamp’s proprietary hardware.