(中文大意)

　　微软已经证实，其在线音乐商店将于今年秋天开张，这一在线音乐商店将归于微软MSN服务范围。一些MSN主管经理和业务开发人员本月出席了在德克萨斯州奥斯汀举行的音乐会议，他们向独立唱片公司展示了MSN计划提供的在线音乐服务。

　　MSN产品经理克里斯蒂安-安德鲁斯（Christine Andrews）表示：“我们希望让他们率先看到我们的想法，给我们的团队一个收集反馈的机会。其它公司走了不同的道路，他们在早期没有与独立唱片公司进行接触。”

　　安德鲁斯表示：“让人们方便地发现、寻找和购买不同流派的音乐十分重要，我们想提供一个站点对于大小唱片公司都能兼顾。”

　　目前微软关于在线音乐商店的细节尚未对外透露。安德鲁斯甚至拒绝表示微软计划开设一家商店还是实行注册服务方式或者两者兼而有之。价格以及音乐目录的大小也没有对外透露。

　　微软在线音乐商店出售的歌曲将为Windows Media格式，这意味着它们能够在市场上约60%的便携播放器和绝大多数个人电脑上播放。

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Microsoft has confirmed that its music store will launch this autumn, under the purview of the software giant's MSN service.

Several MSN executives and business development personnel attended this month's South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, Tuesday and gave independent record labels a private preview demonstration of what MSN plans to offer.

"We wanted to give them a first look at what we were thinking of, and give our team an opportunity to get feedback," MSN product manager Christine Andrews said.

Reaching out to the indie sector was a strategic move to involve them from the beginning, Andrews said. "Other companies took a different route and did not engage with the independent labels early in the process," she said. "We heard that the independent labels did feel neglected a little bit. But more importantly, we want to deliver a site that is great for artists both big and small, and great for the consumers, too."

This approach is not at the expense of major label involvement, of course, but it is more difficult to connect smaller labels with their artists' audience.

"It's important for us to make it easy for people to find, discover and purchase music from a variety of genres," Andrews said. "If we do that, it (won't matter if it's) something really popular, something from a niche label or something else that was previously difficult to find."

Few details of the nascent consumer product were available. Andrews said it was too early in development for that kind of disclosure, declining even to say whether Microsoft planned a store, a subscription service or a combination of both. Questions regarding pricing and catalog size were similarly unanswered.

The songs will be in Microsoft's Windows Media format, which has an integral but optional copy protection layer. This means they will play on more than 60% of the portable players on the market, Andrews said, and on the vast majority of personal computers. Apple's popular iPod series of players work with Microsoft's Windows operating system but do not support Windows Media.