Would you be so opposed to a subscription addition to iTMS?

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I think napster has something here, an *optional* subscription based service that gives you unlimited access to their entire catalogue, and it's only $10/month.



The drawback? once you stop paying for the subscription, the files stop playing. Is this really so bad though? I mean, $10/month really isn't that much to get all the music you could ever want, available at your finger tips, even if you are only 'renting' it in a sense.



I think the other big factor in this is the psychological side of subscription based services, people are easily scared into thinking that things are scams, and won't support the site because they are scared they will get scammed somehow. Many Subscription services that automatically bill you don't get cancelled till far after the user wanted to cancel them(just as many rebates don't get submitted, that type of thing, laziness, forgetfulness)



I dunno, personally, I would *love* to have this feature added to iTMS.



I wonder how they could handle iPod, which wouldn't necessarily know if your songs had expired...or CD burning for that matter...hmm.



how does napster handle this stuff?



I think apple could offer varying packages, maybe $10 for one month's access. or $100 for a full years access, or $60 for 6 months. Or a monthly rate(auto-billed)



thoughts?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 19
    crazychestercrazychester Posts: 1,339member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wrong Robot

    I think napster has something here, an *optional* subscription based service that gives you unlimited access to their entire catalogue, and it's only $10/month.



    The drawback? once you stop paying for the subscription, the files stop playing. Is this really so bad though? I mean, $10/month really isn't that much to get all the music you could ever want, available at your finger tips, even if you are only 'renting' it in a sense.



    I think the other big factor in this is the psychological side of subscription based services, people are easily scared into thinking that things are scams, and won't support the site because they are scared they will get scammed somehow. Many Subscription services that automatically bill you don't get cancelled till far after the user wanted to cancel them(just as many rebates don't get submitted, that type of thing, laziness, forgetfulness)



    I dunno, personally, I would *love* to have this feature added to iTMS.



    I wonder how they could handle iPod, which wouldn't necessarily know if your songs had expired...or CD burning for that matter...hmm.



    how does napster handle this stuff?



    I think apple could offer varying packages, maybe $10 for one month's access. or $100 for a full years access, or $60 for 6 months. Or a monthly rate(auto-billed)



    thoughts?




    I'd not only be happy to pay $10/month (maybe a little less), I'd then happily pay to actually own songs I really liked (to say play on my iPod) provided songs/albums were reasonably priced and depending on the DRM. I'd also almost certainly purchase more music as a result.



    But I'm just one of those people of a particular mindset.
  • Reply 2 of 19
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    when i listen to MY music, i want to OWN it. simple as that. plus, i have an ipod. why would i have an ipod if i didnt wanna carry my tunes with me?
  • Reply 3 of 19
    homhom Posts: 1,098member
    Would I be opposed to iTMS offering a subscription? No with the caveat that all songs had to be available for purchase unlike Napster. I don't want to find out that I can't buy a song because it is only subscription only. Would I use a iTMS subscription? Not a chance in hell.
  • Reply 4 of 19
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Ecch, no. I'll pay for what I want, thanks.
  • Reply 5 of 19
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    The way I see it working is more like a radio, only you get to select what you want to hear. ya know?
  • Reply 6 of 19
    I wouldn't necessarily be opposed, but I wouldn't sign up. I'm afraid I'm too much of a collector.



    I'm a little skeptical about it being a viable business model, however. Many companies have tried it, and none have succeeded. For one thing, the pay as you download model of iTunes guarantees your bandwidth costs are covered. A subscription model means you can't discriminate between those who download 2000 songs and those who download six--meaning bandwidth costs on higher users can cause you to loose money.



    Also, cracking the subscription allows a lot more damage than people cracking single songs they have purchased.



    So I'm not religiously opposed to the idea, but I can see why Apple hasn't tried it yet. If you want that model, you can always go to Napster or RealOne.
  • Reply 7 of 19
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wrong Robot

    The drawback? once you stop paying for the subscription, the files stop playing. Is this really so bad though? I mean, $10/month really isn't that much to get all the music you could ever want, available at your finger tips, even if you are only 'renting' it in a sense.



    Are you on crack? What I paid for and downloaded is mine, mine, mine - forever! These subscription/rental business models will eventually die. This isn't what the consumer wants, this is some corporate head shoving this onto consumers. It will fail. Yup.



    But that's my opinion.
  • Reply 8 of 19
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iPeon

    Are you on crack? What I paid for and downloaded is mine, mine, mine - forever! These subscription/rental business models will eventually die. This isn't what the consumer wants, this is some corporate head shoving this onto consumers. It will fail. Yup.



    But that's my opinion.




    the thing is, there is *so* much music I want to listen to, but I can't afford to be buying $10 albums all the time. I'm just a cheapskate, I could afford $10/month, and would instantly love having access to everything for that fee.



    How about you get me a gift certificate
  • Reply 9 of 19
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wrong Robot

    the thing is, there is *so* much music I want to listen to, but I can't afford to be buying $10 albums all the time. I'm just a cheapskate, I could afford $10/month, and would instantly love having access to everything for that fee.



    How about you get me a gift certificate




    Mmmm... you caused me to rethink this. If I had access to all the music I wanted and be able to download it to my iPod so long as I was a paid subscriber...



    It's an interesting concept. But I just can't see myself locked into a subscription forever and ever just to have access to thousands of music files most of which I will never listen to anyway and then to lose it all once I stop the subscription.



    This works well only as a short term solution. As in your case where you would like to have access to a bunch of music right now. However, you are throwing money away as it will all be gone once you stop paying the rental fee.



    Think about it, once you have your favorite music library complete, will you be buying 10 new songs each and every month?
  • Reply 10 of 19
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    The current system is fine.



    You want it, you buy it. End of story. It's yours, always and forever. No bullcrap. MY music, on MY computer and MY iPod. Period.
  • Reply 11 of 19
    you guys are afraid of the record companies getting nervous about current attempts to hack aac/fairplay, think what would happen if suddenly all you had to do was pay 10$ for one month, download gig after gig of music, cancel subscription, and then apply whatever hack some kid wrote in his basement to remove the drm for said songs. anyway, stevieJ would never go for that, when they made the iTMS, the big thing he was pushing was that people do not like to rent their music, and that there is no subscription fee for itunes.
  • Reply 12 of 19
    mlnjrmlnjr Posts: 230member
    Here's why I'm against the subscription model: Let's say you signed up for some book-of-the-month club, and by paying a membership fee you got one or two books per month and you only had to pay shipping and handling costs on any other books you wanted. If a club like that operated like Napster or any of these other subscription-based music download services, when you decided to cancel your membership to the book club, all of the ink in the books you received would vanish, or the books would burst into flame or something. Or think about it this way: What if people who decided to cancel their membership were then required to return the books? What if Columbia House or any of those other music-by-mail clubs operated that way? "Don't want to pay us anymore? We're sending someone over to take back all of those CDs."



    Pay-per-download works. Apple didn't need a subscription model to shoot iTunes to the number-one spot (just like it didn't need to add WMA support to get to #1, either.) And that's a great point about easily covering bandwidth costs that way, too.
  • Reply 13 of 19
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Of course, it's not hard to see why the industry is so keen on things like Microsoft's ever-forthcoming Janus. From a purely capitalist perspective, a subscription fee to rent content means steady revenue independent of actual usage, and without requiring them to actually publish (that is, release to the general public) the content in any meaningful way.



    It will be interesting to see how artists receive this, though (it's pretty much a given that consumers won't give it two looks). Remember all that hoo-hah about iTMS destroying the album format? What do you think this does? This is just an attempt to make the old business model work: The labels hype some flavor-of-the-month, everyone rents the single, the label makes money and everyone forgets the song, lather, rinse, repeat. That's all that Janus is designed for, and that's all it will accomplish.



    Except for the word "everyone". Consumers have this irrational desire to keep the music they pay for, and they might just like some flavor-of-the-month song enough to keep it. They might not like spending $10/month for the privilege of spending more money to borrow a song. They might not like the inevitably draconian restrictions that will restrict what they can do with that song while they're allowed to listen to it. And since the point of this will be to tie into flavor-of-the-month singles, there will be none of the obscure, original, or out of print stuff that made Napster 1.0 so cool. (In fact, this is one area where all the online services are lacking badly - I'd hoped for much more back-catalog stuff on iTMS by now.)



    I wonder how many rental/subscription services will have to fail before the industry realizes that they have to sell music, they have to (at the very least) meet the consumer halfway on the terms of those sales, and if they want people to buy albums, they'll just have to make good albums.



    And they'd really better get to digitizing their back catalogs before all that tape molders away, dammit.
  • Reply 14 of 19
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    I wouldn't mind paying a minimal fee in order to be able to STREAM all of the music on the ITMS for a set period of say 24 hours...



    this way I don't get attached to any of the music and get angry when it is gone, but I still get to sample crazy music that I would have never listened to otherwise...



    Would you pay $5 for that kind of access if you only were able to stream the music?
  • Reply 15 of 19
    gargoylegargoyle Posts: 660member
    What would be much better is for apple to operate a free iTMS-Radio, which would be played via iTunes - when you hear a song you like you can just click to goto the main store and buy it.
  • Reply 16 of 19
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    With a Janus subscription and something like AudioHijack you can have your cake and eat it, too.
  • Reply 17 of 19
    david rdavid r Posts: 135member
    I subscribe to Rhapsody (windows-only) at work. I work in a basement-level office complex and we don't get any radio stations. It's $9.95/month for access to an amazing catalog. I've been a user for close to a year and it's worth every penny to it. I rather give money to Apple, but I'll take what I can.
  • Reply 18 of 19
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    What happens to your files once Napster goes bust?
  • Reply 19 of 19
    I have no problem with more choice, but I most likely fall in the group of folks Steve described who want to own their music. Heck, I still buy CDs for the most part.
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