Microsoft are not stupid. Their video advertising campaign for Songsmith is horifically tacky but it has gone viral and the download sites are taking a bit of a hammering.

I am still downloading the product to check it out but it strikes me that Microsoft may have cunningly found a way to recoup some of the money they may lose as a result of the EU chasing them again. If they combine the product with some form of Auto-Tune (automatic pitch correction, some modern releases are smothered in it), they will probably make enough money to buy the world.

By the way, be careful when looking up examples of Auto-Tune. Once you get the feeling for the shimmery-ness (technical term) it adds to recordings, you can’t miss it! Well, when it is abused, anyway. This is similar to not being able to un-hear the major compression abuse, such as on the new Metallica album.