Now here is some late breaking news this evening. Microsoft is about to light a fire under the music industries model of doing things. They call it ignition and I can see it lighting up a fire bright enough for me to put on my motorcycle sunglasses to shade my eyes from the explosion. Ignition in concept seems like a good thing.
This could be the total immersion of digital music, taking it to the next level. With DRM about dead as yesterday’s fish dinner sitting outside in your trash can, Microsoft is going to lead the way with their music move.
The first participating act is U.K. band Maximo Park (Warp Records/Caroline Distribution). Microsoft is providing the group’s first single as a free exclusive download via the Zune Marketplace, making the music video available as a free download from the Xbox Live Marketplace and streaming the video on MSN.
This can only be good for musicians as there is another outlet in order to succeed in the business. You can’t argue with 30 million as a number in your potential listening audience. This is a very captive group to market your product and art.
The combined traffic of the MSN, Xbox and Zune properties totals about 30 million regular users, making Ignition the broadest such program available by far.
Technically Speaking, this should be interesting to see in action on Monday when it’s set to release.
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