Microsoft sets song price and competing price for Zune player

In an aim to help Microsoft make a head start with its upcoming Zune music player, Microsoft decided to set the retail price of the Zune to $249.99 to closely match the 30GB iPod.  As a result, Microsoft will be making a loss on the sales of its players this coming holiday season, but aims to recover the costs over the next couple of years, since the Zune project’s strategy will run for several years.  According to an analyst from the JupiterKagan Inc. media research firm, Microsoft will be competing on features rather than price, but needed to set a comparable price to its rival to start with. 

Microsoft also plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in developing and marketing the player and Zune brand and will aim to attract consumers with the player’s limited wireless song and photo sharing capabilities.  They are also working on a Zune mobile phone, but there is no further information about the phone is available at this time.

Like Napster, Microsoft will allow consumers to download an unlimited number of songs for a flat $14.99 monthly subscription or buy songs individually using a Microsoft points based system.  80 Microsoft points can be purchased for $1 and each track costs 79 Microsoft points.  They aim to launch with a library of at least 2 million songs for its November 14th launch, however no video content will be available initially for the launch.  Thanks to yronnen for letting us know about the following news: 

Source: Yahoo! – Music News