Adding more digital music features illustrates IM's transformation over the years from a simple text chatting tool to a control panel for multimedia applications.
AOL, MSN and Yahoo have added dozens of bells and whistles into their technologies to broaden IM's appeal. Current versions of Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and AIM let people play games, share photos, listen to Net radio stations, communicate through Webcams, and send text messages to cell phones.
This is a contrast from IM's simpler, text-based roots. Popularised by AIM in the mid-1990s, instant messaging became a way for people to communicate with friends, families and business contacts in real time.
Microsoft made a noisy entry into IM in 1999. When MSN Messenger launched, it let users communicate directly with AIM screen names. After months of AOL blocks and MSN workarounds, the companies retreated into their separate corners, but it set a nasty precedent over IM.
Yahoo, MSN and AOL have since maintained a steady peace. But under the surface, the companies are waging a cold war-style arms race for control of valuable real estate on the PC desktop.
Microsoft is taking full advantage of its Windows platform to grow MSN Music. The music store is already available in its Windows Media Player 10, and MSN Messenger is next on the list.
"Here they've got this asset; it's got millions of users," Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, said about MSN Messenger. "One thing that Microsoft can do to build a digital media platform is link different services together. You use your big assets to point consumers to new services you're offering."
Watching anxiously from the sidelines
The marriage between IM and music is not without its hurdles. Record labels have quietly expressed dissatisfaction over services that let people trade or even stream songs to each other. IM slips dangerously close to the land of peer to peer, record industry executives say.
In a sense, Apple's iTunes program already allows this, letting people who are on the same internal network browse each other's playlists and stream music. But label executives privately say this was supposed to be for home use, not for use by entire school dorms or offices -- and certainly not used for downloading music, as is allowed by unauthorised hacks like OurTunes. The record labels have pushed Apple to put tighter restrictions on this practice, music industry sources say.
Label executives say that people who are part of the same subscription service can listen to each other's playlists without a problem, because they're all already paying for rights to the same music. But allowing one IM user to browse another person's playlist and stream music without paying for it could become problematic.
"If I'm streaming my collection to someone else, and no one's getting compensated for it, that's not ok," said one label executive, who asked not to be named.
