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What the?? I was just reading this interview with the Head of Mobile in Microsoft UK about their new mobile music service. This is completely insane. Completely. If I am understanding this correctly the service works thusly, you buy music on your mobile phone from this service for £1.50 per track (as compared to £0.79 on iTunes) then for paying that extra 100% you get the added benefit of not being able to listen to those tracks on your computer nor anywhere else. Ever. Yeah, so when you get a new phone you lose all your music, too. What? WHAT?

So the service is insane. But the interview even more full of crazy – they clearly know what a crap service it is and they don’t even have a way to spin it. How can Microsoft be launching things like this in this day and age where everyone is getting off of DRM? Arguably, a service like Nokia’s Comes With Music where the DRM is subscription based so you get free access to their entire library for the duration of your subscription (the lifetime of your phone, in that particular case) at least makes some sense. I don’t think, at this point, people are really looking for that but you could make a value argument there. But for this? There’s simply no justifiable reason except the exploitation of under-informed customers. A great way to treat them and definitely a good way to ruin a brand.

Some choice responses:

Q: What is your message to consumers – why should I come to you instead of Amazon or iTunes? What do you offer that none of your competitors do?

A: There’s a whole bunch of people who are very loyal to MSN on the web and there’s now almost a million users of MSN Mobile every month, within the space of 12 months of it being launched.

So there’s a whole bunch of people who are using MSN on their mobile phone for a whole variety of reasons. And we’re saying to them, if you want to download music, it’s available here. If you don’t, that’s fine.

It’s a consumer’s choice and they will decide if they’re happy with the MSN Music service or if they want to go somewhere else.

So… you want to knowingly take advantage and really just exploit your most loyal users by offering them a service that is more expensive and inferior to your competition? Is it any wonder that Microsoft doesn’t have a good reputation these days? And is it ridiculous for a company to say “if you want it cool, if you don’t cool.” Uh, of course, but usually, if you have a product you want to say, “You should want it because it kicks ass because of these reasons. Unless of course you can not even make up one good reason.

The fee for downloading tracks – £1.50 – is relatively high compared to 79p on iTunes and less than that on certain Amazon tracks. Why is that?

We’re constantly reviewing our pricing and if we feel this price point is incorrect, we’ll look to amend it.

Being more expensive and less useful than your competition without an established brand in the industry. Um. What makes 2x the price correct in your mind?

Q: If I buy these songs on your service – and they’re locked to my phone – what happens when I upgrade my phone in six months’ time?

A: Well, I think you know the answer to that.

It’s just that he probably can’t believe it. It seems almost impossible to believe that anyone could conceive of a service that operates like this and expect it to succeed.

Can you really expect people to buy music that’s locked to a device they upgrade every 12 to 18 months?

I didn’t realise phones were churning that quickly in the marketplace these days. I’m sure there are some users who change their phone every year. This is an introduction – it’s a toe in the water for MSN Mobile and we’ll see how the service develops and we’ll keep a very close eye on it, and we’ll look to amend and change it as necessary as time progresses.

You really don’t know how your market operates? That, like, wasn’t a part of research done when trying to figure out what service to provide? It wasn’t important to know? Just curious, how long do you expect to continue working for Microsoft? I expect not for too much longer.

Everything about this confuses the hell out of me. First of all, why is there another music service that isn’t the Zune Marketplace? Does Microsoft feel it should have as many music initiatives as possible? Does this make three (zune, plays for sure and msn mobile)? Second of all, What THE HELL?

It’s so crazy I feel like something must be wrong. Is this a hoax? Or some misunderstanding stemming from someone who gives the worst interview possible? I haven’t seen this reported on elsewhere except that pcmag article, so maybe something’s up. I can’t check it out myself because you can’t see the site on an iPhone. Anyone out there have the real scoop?