Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS
Do you want to rent your music?
For $15/month you can load up a Zune with a wide (although not exhaustive) catalog of rental music. Your music plays back for the length of your subscription and your credit card is automatically charged each month until you cancel. Of course, for the same $180/year you can purchase quite a few iTunes albums and singles (or go completely wacky at a used CD store or swapping service like lala.com), but you can't jump onto an actual iPod subscription model.
Subscription models are surprisingly nice. All the music you want, when you want it, without much in the way of limits. If you feel like listening to Nirvana one day and Barry Manilow the next, a subscription model means you can sample without commitment. It's a perfect match to the "for now but not forever" mindset. Sure, if you find something you absolutely love, you can go out and buy it but subscriptions give you the aural equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet (and, sometimes, a similar need for antacid.) With a subscription, Billboard's top music can always be in your pocket.
If an iTunes subscription model was available, would you be willing to try it out? How much would you agree to spend per month? Less than Microsoft's $14.95? More? What dollar amount would you put on such a service? And if iTunes left out album-only tracks the way Zune Marketplace does, would this be an insurmountable barrier to you?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Jon H said 6:07PM on 4-03-2007
Not interested...
Everyone's trying to get people onto monthly-charged service subscriptions. It's like they want to apply a tick to your scalp.
Also, if you're on a subscription, you don't have the option of spending the money on something else, or nothing at all, without giving up your music.
It's much easier to go a month or three without buying any new music, than it is to go that long without much of your music at all.
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Tony said 6:09PM on 4-03-2007
The problem I have with the subscription models is, once you end your subscription the songs go away. Poof! History. I'd rather *own* the music.
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Sabon said 6:14PM on 4-03-2007
Do you want to rent your music?
NO!
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Quix said 6:18PM on 4-03-2007
Music rentals? No thanks. Movie rentals, yes please.
I hope someday to see the addition of movie rentals to iTunes.
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Frank said 6:20PM on 4-03-2007
I want to own my music, not rent it.
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rogersmj said 6:27PM on 4-03-2007
I'll take the dissenting opinion here...I would love to have this option. Being able to grab a ton of music for $15 is very appealing, and if I get tired of something after a week then I wouldn't feel like I wasted money. If there's something I consistently love and would want to keep forever, then I'll pay the $10 to buy the album forever. I don't see what the downside of this is.
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sladuuch said 6:31PM on 4-03-2007
Quix nailed it: movie rentals yes, music rentals no.
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Hawkman said 6:29PM on 4-03-2007
Grief no. If I feel poor one month - and as a student in the UK after they abolished grants, that's a lot of months - I don't buy any music. Under a subscription service, those months I have no music. Screw that.
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Tim Kimberl said 6:29PM on 4-03-2007
See I'd rather rent, I'm the type that gets bored of music after a few listens. I'd rather have access to more music I may not of listened to before hand than be limiting to 1 song.
I'd love to use services like Urge and crap, main problem? Being a mac user.
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Donald Burr said 6:31PM on 4-03-2007
Um, you do realize that with the Zune, you are paying TWICE? You have to pay the monthly service fee, AND you have to pay to buy many of the songs/albums on the Zune Marketplace. They charge "Microsoft Points" for certain songs... well, guess how you add Microsoft Points to your account? Yup... gotta whip out the good ol' credit card.
So yeah. I'll throw in my $0.02 with the "Renting music? No thanks!" crowd.
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eggstone said 10:26AM on 4-04-2007
It would be attractive, if the rent model can allow you buy music at the same time, for example, a $15 per month rental can allow you select 15 of the songs and "buy" them each month, so that, for example, you are tired of a year's subscription, you cancel the service, and you still get 180 songs on your hard drive. The music companies are still happy, because in this way, they are ensured that you at least bought 15 songs each month! And by agreeing such contract, the consumer is gained by having a huge rented library with only paying some minial monthly fee.
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ShaleX said 6:41PM on 4-03-2007
Oh Subscription service, or lack there of is the only reason why I miss WMP11. You act like you can't Own the music on a subscription service. But, I know, i exhausted more then the $180 worth of music in the first month of my Urge sub.
It may be "renting" but sometimes i get a bit timesick for old music i used to listen to back when i was a kid.... Or, i feel expirimental and want to hear some new album i'd kinda heard about but would never buy. So.. my broke ass dosen't have to dr. And if something is good enough to keep, or own. *click* there, i own the tracks.. I can burn em, transfer em, do whatever I want with em..
IMHO Subs are one more level of freedom to explore music w/o dealing with the costs, financially of buying a bunch of songs or music i'm not interested in and would be stuck with, or b) logisop $10-$15 to a CD I'd listen to once. or b, dealing with the trials and tribulations of piracy.
And, heck, with Urge (Which is the exact same databse as Zune Marketplace, with a different DRM) you take off the MP3 player, it's $10 a month.
I wish apple would steal one more feature from WMP11 though... If i can't have a sub, Either let me a) stream a full album for free, or b) queue up songs to play the samples for..
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Mattazuma said 6:40PM on 4-03-2007
I use Rhapsody now and it is great. It's only $10 a month and they have around 2 million songs online. This lets me listen to all kinds of music that I would have never paid to listen to for at $1 a song.
There are also ways (that I don't use) to rip the songs to MP3s as you play them.
The subscription service is in addition to the iTunes Music Store, it is not instead of.
If you listen to the same music over and over again, obviously a subscription service is not for you.
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Jeremy said 6:51PM on 4-03-2007
Can you imagine being able to rent anything on iTunes for your iPod and/or Apple TV?
Movies, TV Shows, Music, Audiobooks, iPod Games?
For a set price every month?
I would definitely pay for that on a monthly basis.
Price? $30-35 (too much?).
Would be nice to be able to receive some sort of discount too on material you may want to keep. (Rent a song you decide you want to keep and pay $.90 instead of the $.99)
It's an exciting concept.
P.S. I feel like listening to Nirvana every day.
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David said 6:45PM on 4-03-2007
I have always been interested in subscription services and if Apple ever got around to offering one I'd defiantly use it with atleast my iPod nano. I've been considering buying another flash player with PlaysforSure just for this.
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Stephen said 6:51PM on 4-03-2007
I think I'd go with a combination of the two -- Like, for instance, if I could spend $2/month and have four rentals out at a time (or $5 and 10 rentals) for music that I just wanted to hear every now and then and buy the music that I want to keep... That'd be really great.
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Kenny said 7:40PM on 4-04-2007
I'd pay $15/month, and pay $.49 per song if they were 256kbp/s and DRM free.
That would be fricken sweet.
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Sprules said 6:51PM on 4-03-2007
Before I switched to Mac I used to rent my music all the time through Napster becuase it was cheap and was the fastest possible way of expanding my library of music. When it came time to switch I no longer had the choice of renting music and becuase I didn't want to lose it all, I ripped the DRM off all my music (tsk tsk, I know) then moved them on to my Mac without any loss in sound quality.
I could only dream if iTunes would offer a subscription subscripiton service.
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artifex said 6:52PM on 4-03-2007
Renting music? That's what my satellite radio is for.
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Thataboy said 7:09PM on 4-03-2007
I'd love this option. I would absolutely still BUY the tracks I really wanted (the premium $1.29 versions), but it'd be great to fill up my iPod with completely new music any time I wanted.
It would be an incredible way to find new artists. iTunes' 30 second previews simply don't cut the mustard. I want to hear, in reasonable-128kAAC-DRM, absolutely anything I wanted.
It would be a no-lose situation. Apple and the record companies get constant revenue, and the exposure to tons of new artists could lead to increased purchases.
As for movies, Apple absolutely, positively, without a doubt MUST have a subscription or rental model. I am a die hard Apple super-ultra-fanboy, and I would NEVER buy iTunes movies! 10 bucks for crap quality? I only need to own a handful of movies, and I want those in HD -- 99% of movies I watch, I watch ONCE and send them back to Netflix. I don't need physical media, but for sales, I need HD quality (720p MINIMUM) -- if it's a sale, then I won't mind the longer download times for the huge file. A rental, well give me basic DVD quality in a highly compressed H264.
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