Why iTunes needs to offer an album-based subscription service

One of the key announcements to come out of Apple's "It's only rock and roll, but I like it" event on September 9th was iTunes LP. As implied in its name, iTunes LP seeks to provide a more rich album experience, something that has taken a backseat given the decline of physical albums.

iTunes LP includes features typically found on physical albums, such as liner notes and photos, as well as exclusive video content. One of the goals of iTunes LP is to resuscitate album sales, which have been struggling in the iTunes age of à la carte individual track sales. While iTunes LP provides a means to resuscitate the album, an album-based subscription service would further this goal even more.

One of the crucial points that Apple -- and Steve Jobs in particular -- had with selling the iTunes Music Store concept (now just called the "iTunes Store") to the music industry was the need for à la carte music sales. That is, rather than selling music on an album-only or selective track, "singles" basis, consumers should be given the choice to purchase any song they wish.

Many in the music industry -- recording artists in particular -- balked at the idea. Their reasoning was that albums are concepts, and as such should be sold as a whole. To them, allowing à la carte sales would be akin to allowing one to purchase selective chapters from a book. That is to say, an album is much more than the sum of its parts. And I agree with this reasoning. I can't imagine listening to the Beatles "A Day in the Life" without listening to all of Sgt. Peppers, or to any song off of Kanye West's "College Dropout" without listening to the rest of the album.

But the music industry acceded to Apple's wishes, due primarily to two reasons. The first is that it needed to present consumers a viable and compelling alternative to P2P file sharing. And the Mac's relatively small footprint in the computing space would serve as a good testbed. If it didn't do well, it was just a small percentage of consumers anyway. And if it proved a successful concept, well, they'd be able to maintain control and steer the ship as they chose given that this was such a small percentage of consumers anyway.

Six years, Windows-compatibility, and several iterations and generations of iPods and iPhones later, iTunes is now the leading music retailer in the U.S.. As a result, Apple is now among the most influential players in the recording industry, with the ability to set the course for how consumers purchase music.

One of the primary arguments that Steve Jobs has made against a subscription model is that consumers want to own their music. But in the digital age, ownership has taken on a significantly different meaning and matters much less than it used to. Consumers today may not be de facto owners of the music they listen to, but enjoy many of the benefits of ownership through other means. Services such as Grooveshark and songza allow consumers to listen to any song by any artist whenever they choose; and even YouTube provides a means to this end.

Back when I was growing up, I had membership to both Columbia House and BMG Music Service, both of which are in many ways are subscription services. Rather than cannibalizing sales, these subscriptions fueled visits to my local Music Plus and Tower Records, where I would purchase even more music. To this end, an album-based subscription model is one that Apple should offer as an option to consumers. Such an offering, coupled with an option to purchase an album at a discount, would not only incentivize album purchases, but also possibly provide the record industry steadier revenue streams. And at the same time, consumers are still afforded the option to purchase tracks à la carte.

To Apple's credit, it has incentivized album purchases with "Complete My Album" as well as favorable pricing. While iTunes LP certainly offers consumers a value proposition, whether or not it's a compelling one that will rejuvenate album sales is very much debatable. The feature, coupled with an album-based subscription service (with iTunes LP goodies as a purchase-only benefit), could provide the winning formula for rejuvenating album sales.

View Tags

Categories

Analysis / Opinion iTS

One of the key announcements to come out of Apple's "It's only rock and roll, but I like it" event on September 9th was iTunes LP. As...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

54 Comments

Filter by:

Schelske

Nope. No way. Never. I will never rent music and I don't know anyone among my large network of musicians who would. Completely flawed analysis.

September 16 2009 at 1:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Doug

Stop the paranoia!

A subscription option is not going to steal away your paid-for music.

And it's *obviously* not going to take away your right to buy music.

Get real, people.

September 15 2009 at 12:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brady

Ok, this has turned into a little bit of a confusing issue in terms of what this "album" model of sales is actually going to do in the long run. Currently Apple will buy singles or albums from artists and distributors for sale, basically as singles regardless of whether or not an entire set of songs is meant to be sold together or not. Realistically, singles are the way to go, no one thinks about spending 99 cents or even $2 on a song if it's the song you really want. People quickly forget how crappy CD albums got and how much filler is used to round out the number of tracks even now, but especially in the late 90's just before downloading became huge. In fact the overall abuse of the album sales model resulted in a lack of caring and respect for the people involved in the production of music by allowing the publishing houses and distributors to demand not a certain quality of music but quantity of music.

Basically all i will say is that this seems like a step backward. Regardless of the quality of the audio, which doesn't really matter in the end as we'll all buy it anyway, apple is not learning from the majors, and will only drive more people to track down "higher quality" downloads instead of paying for albums when all they want is three songs. Subscription based single sales on the other hand...

September 15 2009 at 11:40 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

woodomomo

Actually, I think that would be a very good idea! I wouldnt mind seeing that!

RT
www.web-privacy.de.tc

September 15 2009 at 11:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rich Lacy

If you want me to ever buy a FULL album, then you better make sure that every song on it is amazing. Done. I would be SO much happier if artists would simply release only songs that they LOVE instead of feeling compelled to release a "package" of tunes that are full of filler. Imagine getting a fix from your favorite artists every couple of months instead of waiting years in between albums.

Done that way, an artist could really take their time crafting a collection that tells a story, should they choose to do so, without us waiting years with nothing else in between.

September 15 2009 at 3:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nucci.jeff

My $.02... I can definitely hear the difference between 128kbps MP3 and 128kbps AAC. All of this however, is irrelevant. I think this was touched on momentarily... It's the system's we use to listen to our music. For me personally I have a 5G iPod Video, an iPhone 3G that I use Dr. Beats with, a Kenwood system with a dock connector in the car and a Bose Sounddock at home. Besides for maybe the Bose and the Dr. Beats, none of the D/A converters and other electronics are reproducing all of the information in the file. There is stuff there you aren't hearing.

On top of that, MIT did a study with Berklee College of Music a few years ago and found that a 50kbps MP3 file will reproduce the original waveform at a level where the average human can't discern the difference.

I do prefer higher bitrates, but that's because I'm a prick and a musician.

September 14 2009 at 7:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Lindsey Kemp

i agree with mentalsticks..........

wow!!!!!!!!!

simple subject, so let's chat not argue...!

what's wrong with people.....

lk.....

September 14 2009 at 7:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ericdano

After Kanye West's performance over the weekend, I won't be buying anything of his. I hope all his music gets Pirated and he ends up like MC Hammer.

But the Album format is dead. Why would I want to subscribe to it? I can't think of any albums what I'd want every song off of.

September 14 2009 at 3:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jason A. Quest

The argument in favor of an "album-based subscription service" would be improved dramatically by explaining what the hell you mean by that. Once you've laid that basic foundation, maybe you could follow up by describing the concrete benefits of it, first to Apple, then to the consumer. Without that, it's just a bunch of pointless navel-gazing.

By the way, as much as they tried to make members think of them that way, Columbia and RCA's music clubs were in no way "subscription services". You paid for what you wanted, and didn't buy what you didn't want. Demonstrating an understanding of the "subscription" concept would also help support your argument (whatever it is).

September 14 2009 at 1:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve

This assumption that an album is more than the sum of its parts always uses the same handful of examples as evidence, and I find it kinda ludicrous. Yes, Sgt. Pepper's is a brilliant album as a whole. I will however listen to, say, "She's Leaving Home" without feeling the need to hear the entirety of the album. But again it's always Sgt. Pepper's, Pet Sounds, Radiohead, etc.

Most albums are NOT more than the sum of their parts, even if the entire album is good. Fleet Foxes recently released an excellent album. I enjoy just about every track. But I don't think it's somehow absurd for someone to own half of them, or two of them, and not the whole album. The fact is, most albums are not concept albums, they are just collections of good songs.

Some other examples of artists with albums that are great collections of good music that would work just as well without the full-album experience: Cake, Billie Joel, Audioslave, Band Of Skulls, The Black Crowes, Bob Marley, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Johnny Cash.

And that's not even mentioning artists that put out albums that are 80%+ crap with 2 good tracks, which is probably the vast majority of albums in existence.

The record labels make this 'but the album is an art form' argument so they sell whole cds and not individual songs, and use the few examples of perfectly crafted albums while ignoring the 99.99% of music that doesn't work that way. That's my call anyway.

September 14 2009 at 1:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply