The difference between Apple and Microsoft thinking

I wrote yesterday about Steve Jobs call on the music labels to end their requirements for digital rights management on digital music. I thought it might be useful to cite both Apple's and Microsoft's public positions on DRM music and compare them.

First, an excerpt from Steve Jobs' letter:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

And now Microsoft's response, quoted in today's New York Times:

Jason Reindorp, marketing director for Zune at Microsoft, said Mr. Jobs’s call for unrestricted music sales was “irresponsible, or at the very least naïve,” adding, “It’s like he’s on top of the mountain making pronouncements, while we’re here on the ground working with the industry to make it happen.”

“He’s certainly a master of the obvious,” Mr. Reindorp said, adding that “the stars were already aligning” to loosen the restrictions.

In a nutshell, Apple asks consumers to imagine the possibilities of a different digital media world. Microsoft calls such vision irresponsible, naive, and obvious, while simultaneously claiming they are lobbying those same labels to make it happen anyway. In Jobs' letter, he mentions consumers once, but customers three times. In Microsoft's statements, consumers and customers are notably absent; its words focused only on competition and the industry.

With messages like these, is it any wonder that Apple has won the marketing war for music customers?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Marketing, Microsoft, Music