Microsoft seems to think buyers are uninformed boobs who will just be persuaded by advertising crap. The new "pod" buyer is overwhelmingly educated by his peers and has used various playback devices and an advertisement is not likely to make a whit worth of difference at this point in history.
Ballmer is clueless as are his minions. It is obvious, so why doesn't the media just say it.
If I wanted to make a ZPod, I would look to beat Apple at its own game, not copy the game that was 2 generations back and then wait a year before updating it.
MS is becoming a laughing stock.
For some strange reason Apple thinks that computer buyers are also uniformed boobs who will just be persauaded by advertising crap. What are we upto 55 get a mac ads, I THINK WE GET THE IDEA THAT PCs have Viruses, but being boobs.....cannot wait for the next ad about it.
Have you used a Zune? Its not bad at all, radio and wireless is very nice. The only reason I will not get one is cause I cannot install Rockbox on it. I stopped running apples firmware a long time ago on my ipod, Itunes frankly sucks.
i also load my ipod with music from my music library.
This is the best music experience that i had i a long while, and i am not even talking about the free podcast that can be loaded to my ipod.
In my own opinion, Itunes concept is the best concept ever for music. There is no way i would pay for a music subsription scheme like Microsoft is offering. Total.y ludicrous, and i bett that most of people would agree with me.
Microsoft is so has been !!!!!!
They are bloated with money and they waste it on such campaign.
Microsoft is so out of touch. I don't even consider iPods Digital Music Players ..they're Digital Media Players now. I'm always showing pictures on mine or using the address book sync.
I agree but let's not forget iTunes. Heck I can't synch my iPhone to more than one computer and it was the restictions that lead me to discovering limewire like the other 95% of the population. And as a software sound designer, I have seen my material on usenet groups and p2p and I have never complained about it. In fact, I have asked what users thought about it.
That said, having also been a National Marketing Director, I can't help but wonder if microsoft is planning donethung really big. They are leaving no stone unturned. While their last marketing efforts say no, they will flub it up, there us a small part of me that wonders, when the time is right, windows 7, a new partnership, if they will come out, full force and brand everywhere.
Its great to pull apart this ad when most poeple here probably have acquired thier 120gb of music illegally.
Now pretend for a sec that you were are a user who bought all thier music online, make sense now??
For the ones going on about how they have bought cds etc, well frankly with the music getting pumped out these days by artists, your are better off getting 2-3 tracks online that are quality instead of a CD that has those 3 tracks and about 9 crap tracks. That is why i purchase my music online, if i like it I buy it.
Having worked A&R for a label, those are called filler tracks and have seen artists have more hit songs pulled from one release and placed in another album to sell more albums. The releases, or hits, are each marketed as singles. These days it makes it(Internet) easier fir the artist. No more breaks anymore. If you have a hut sing, you can get exposure either in a movie I'd selling music. So much easier these days. I still dislike the iTunes lock down of the device and computer though. While you can authorize more than one computer, you can't synch the iPhone but to only one.
Fwiw. I worked in royalties and can go on record that there are still, unreleased Beatle songs. You will hear them someday. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
... i bought one to check it out, it felt so cheap. i took it to the gym one day and i decided it was garbage and just left it on the bench in the locker room. i didn't even care. in fact i pity the person that found it.
And Microsoft has forgotten Pirate Bay! iPod works great with Pirate Bay! All for free (however legal not too sure...)
oh they haven't forgotten it. or that it is 100% illegal. which is why they don't talk about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wynand32
You folks crack me up. If Apple had come out with a subscription service, you'd all be calling it the next best thing since sliced bread.
not it if was this same crap.
let's keep in mind that you can take music from the itunes store and burn it to CD, use it on other devices. you might not be able to through itunes, but you can always do it from the files. Last I checked, those Zune Pass songs only play on the Zune.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quadra 610
Laughable.
Here's MDN's take:
[B]Except that you do get to keep 10 whole songs per month
AND keep in mind that you have to use the 10 songs in that month. there's no rollover. You can't save up credits.
So lets say in January I download 100 songs with my zune pass. It would take me to October to buy all 100 with 'song credits', at the cost of $150. Even if they were top line songs, I could get them in one day for $129 from itunes. and now I own them. and I didn't have to pay any extra money to keep listening to them until I had credits to use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wynand32
. You'd lose access to those songs that you'd downloaded under the subscription, sure, but what did that cost you for, say, a year's use? $60?
not at all. the cost is independent of the number of tracks. to download a song (or a thousand) and use it for 12 months is $180. And only on your Zune.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lilgto64
I don't need to download 350 tracks and listen to them all weekend to decide if I like a band or not - I can use the preview function on iTunes and sample a few tracks and pretty much decide whether to investigate that band any further.
And now there's places like Pandora (which I play on my ipod touch all the time) that stream whole songs for free.
Are there ANY real advantages to having the zune pass?
I've never bought an mp3 a day in my life. I've always bought a cd, or a discography (proud owner of all AC/DC and Bob Marley ) then turned it into mp3s, or, gone the unmentionable route. It seems to me though, that if I'm "out and about" and want to quickly add a song to my collection, I'm going to want to pay for it outright so I can own it for as long as I want. It doesn't make sense to me, in this day in age, to "rent" music in digital format, especially with storage getting the way it is. Storage is getting so big, even if something isn't liked, people still tend to not delete it. Sure Little Mermaid 3 was bad, but I've got 2TB of storage, fook it.
i don't know why microsoft still believes in the subscription model. after all, the #1 music seller in the U.S. doesn't even offer a subscription plan.
this kind of thing has such a limited appeal it's ridiculous.
teenagers won't use it, they pirate music and/or buy a few singles for 99 cents, especially because the popular genres (pop, rap/r&b) only have good singles and the albums are trash.
older people won't use it because they are used to owning their music and can afford an album for $10, and they already have a large library of CDs that they've already ripped. they are also unlikely to like a lot of newer music so they'll be buying
oh yeah, and you lose all your music except for the 10 free downloads they give you a month once you cancel. that doesn't appeal to anybody and shows why there isn't a single subscription service that's really successful
the music industry as a whole is failing at competing with piracy, so instead of getting a subscription service i'm guessing most people will buy the occasional album if it's extremely good, and simply pirate the rest of the garbage the industry puts out.
that MS can't advertise something without trying to purposefully mislead the public. No one is REALLY stupid enough to think that the ONLY way to fill your iPod is to shell out 30 grand. It's like they are trying to market to children or people with literally half a brain.
The ZunePass does have merit, though. It IS cool that you can listen to anything whenever you want, and it IS cool that you can keep 10 DLs a month. Why not sell it for what it is and stop trying to pull the wool over people's eyes? People just AREN'T that stupid, and the 2 seconds it takes for someone to think "Now wait a minute, MS", you just lost them, maybe even for good, because you were trying to pull a fast one on them.
People are commenting that rental music has always failed in the past and aren't analysing why the model has failed. Is that because people don't want to rent music or because the rented music won't play on the leading (70% market share) music player?
There's a lot of talk from people here that kids don't want rental services and don't have a credit card neccessary to use such a service. Perhaps these people should look at the success of World of Warcraft. WoW is a monthly subscription service primarily aimed at kids that makes its publisher $1 billion a year in revenue. Yes, I do mean $1,000,000,000.
If Apple came out with a similar scheme I gaurantee that it would succeed. They could easily offer quarterly or annual gift cards in stores to allow kids and teens to use the service. If you're young, you don't already have a music collection like we do. Why wouldn't they want access to millions of tracks?
Are you comparing a computer game to music? Well that explains why you prefer the rental service. You see a game (in general) is what you play and when you are finished you will probably never touch it again and move on to the next most recent game. With music however it's a different ball GAME. I can listen to music, that which I percieve to be good, over and over again. And if you have a normal size collection you can bring some variaty into your repetoir. If I could rent a game I would probably do that as well. But music? No way!
Thus a rental service for games, movies and maybe other products are good candidates to be lended to this service. But music sure isn't one of them. At least not to the majority.
Its great to pull apart this ad when most poeple here probably have acquired thier 120gb of music illegally.
My iTunes collection is over 120MB and 99% of was obtained legally. I've been buying music for decades and subscribe to eMusic, which gives me 90 tracks/month for $20 (absolutely legal tracks that I own forever, no matter what happens to eMusic). And it's all music I want, which probably wouldn't be true of Zune marketplace.
Subscription models are fine provided the people paying for them realize that there is no guarantee that the music they're enjoying now will be their's to listen to five years from now. It just doesn't seem to have much appeal. People want to own their music.
Are you comparing a computer game to music? Well that explains why you prefer the rental service. You see a game (in general) is what you play and when you are finished you will probably never touch it again and move on to the next most recent game. With music however it's a different ball GAME. I can listen to music, that which I percieve to be good, over and over again. And if you have a normal size collection you can bring some variaty into your repetoir. If I could rent a game I would probably do that as well. But music? No way!
Thus a rental service for games, movies and maybe other products are good candidates to be lended to this service. But music sure isn't one of them. At least not to the majority.
Just to back you up... games, movies, and tv shows I tend to use once and then rarely, if ever, again. Music I listened to as a kid I still listen to today so I want to own it. At this point in my life I don't buy much music, just maintain what I have so the idea of being tied into expiring account for the rest of my life is about as far from ideal as you can get.
My iTunes collection is over 120MB and 99% of was obtained legally. I've been buying music for decades and subscribe to eMusic, which gives me 90 tracks/month for $20 (absolutely legal tracks that I own forever, no matter what happens to eMusic). And it's all music I want, which probably wouldn't be true of Zune marketplace.
90 songs for $20/month is a service I could go for.
90 songs for $20/month is a service I could go for.
PS: I assume you mean GB.
emusic is great. I have been a customer for almost 3 years now. Previously most of the stuff I was downloading or just couldn't find through iTunes was on emusic for MUCH MUCH cheaper! You won't find radio top-20 songs on there but I don't listen to that stuff anyway. I very rarely EVER go to iTunes, unless I am desperate.
You can't get the 90 songs for $20/month now but I think you can still get 70 for the same price. You can still get 90/month but it costs a little more for new customers. I think this is one of the very few times I have experienced where being an early adopter had some benefit. The really cool thing is you can re-download your songs if you need to. Like, if you download something on your work computer, you can go home and download them for your home computer too and they are all DRM-free. There are great ways to find new music based on your tastes. I just can't say enough good about em'.
Plus, if you are wanting to just check them out and get some free music, you can sign up and get 50 free songs to keep no matter what. You have to give a credit card number but if you decide you don't want to get the service you will not get charged and you get to keep your 50 songs. Not a bad deal if you want to check 'em out.
Are you comparing a computer game to music? Well that explains why you prefer the rental service. You see a game (in general) is what you play and when you are finished you will probably never touch it again and move on to the next most recent game.
I never said that I preferred the rental system and I was not comparing games in general to music. I was comparing MMORPGs to music.
I was just pointing out that kids and teenagers are used to paying monthly fees for services. World of Warcraft was released five years ago and people are playing it in greater numbers than ever before. It's not a game you ever "complete" so people don't move on. A gaming service like WoW has a lot of similarities with a music rental service. If the publishers turned their servers off, people would no longer be able to play the game they've paid up to $600 to subscribe to.
To most of you, thanks for your help in validating my opinion of so many Apple fans. And incidentally, I only posted because the positions taken in the comment section here are so rabidly irrational. I'm certainly not getting paid to post here, or anywhere--but Microsoft, if you're reading, I'll take some cash if you're so inclined.
You're not even getting paid to be here?
You must not have much to do if you have time to try and get mac owners on a mac board to not use their ipods with the music they already own, buy a windows PC, a Zune and subscribe to the $15 a month Zune Pass for the rest of their life (or until microsoft decides you don't need it any more).
"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far."
Heeelarious. About 80% of the music on my 20GB iPod is ripped from CD's I already own.
In various legal (I believe) ways, about 90% of my 100+ GB's came from purchased CD's. Mostly I go to used CD stores, buy discs at half-price, rip them, go back to the store and trade them in in for half what I paid and buy more, making my net cost 1/4 or less of buying the CDs. Plus I ripped 15 years worth of the fave CD's I already owned (and could now trade in once ripped and backed to multiple drives).
And I admit checking CD's out of the public library to rip. Is this legal?
Finally, I supplement this with the occasional iTunes or physical media purchase.
So I don't have all the latest and most hyped, but I have a great music collection that works for me and didn't cost much at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fraklinc
These ads won't work, 1st, the average Kid can't afford to flush $14.99 a month just for music....
...Who the heck wants to subscribe to a $14.99 monthly service just for music in this freggin economy when you can use Pandora or bit torrent for free.
It's not just KIDS who can't afford all this "nickel and diming for "services," user fees, taxes, tolls, etc. that's getting tacked onto everything, e.g., do you iPhone users want to add ANOTHER $15/mo. to your $100+ monthly bills? Along with your Cable/satellite bill with separate fees for the box, and this digital add-on and that premium channel or service.
How much music can you really like and get to know anyway? And of that, how much can you remember when you change what you've downloaded from the buffet. Enjoyin and savoring art is not an "all you can eat" proposition for me anyway.
In another vein, if you start looking these little cash drains may be in more places than you realize. "Credit card insurance," that lifetime gym membership you haven't used in three years, subscriptions you don't need or read, membership "levels" in shopping services you're not using, "MobileMe" for a part of that you can get for free elsewhere, 99% of "extended warranties" on products, etc., etc.
I attacked this aspect of my life as soon as the big melt-down started and have hacked away several hundred a month (really) from my budget in "recurring expenses" and frankly, I notice little to no loss in my quality of life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ICD-EVIL
If Apple came out with a similar subscription service all of the posts in this thread would be totally different, you would all be praising the great Steve Jobs for his wonderful new idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wynand32
You folks crack me up. If Apple had come out with a subscription service, you'd all be calling it the next best thing since sliced bread.
...Of course, Apple wouldn't charge only $14.95 a month, and they wouldn't give you 10 songs to keep in the bargain.
I agree that many would endorse what they now deny, but the second poster's unhinged bias comes out when he asserts Apple wouldn't be competitive with its offer. It wouldn't have become the leading music seller in America if it didn't have a good value for payment ratio.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aizmov
In Captialist America Microsoft F@#ks YOU!
And Apple, I suppose, is a tax-payer supported government run program which develops and gives free wonderfully designed computers, phones, music players and media to the poor?
PS: you might want to learn to spell the name of the hated system that's made your entire historically unprecedented lifestyle possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wynand32
....people are saying things like "In Captialist America Microsoft F@#ks YOU!"? And this from fans of a company in Apple that makes far more in profit of off them than even Microsoft makes.
Fascinating fanbase Apple has.
We are something, in whole and in our arguin' parts, ain't we?
I never said that I preferred the rental system and I was not comparing games in general to music. I was comparing MMORPGs to music.
I was just pointing out that kids and teenagers are used to paying monthly fees for services. World of Warcraft was released five years ago and people are playing it in greater numbers than ever before. It's not a game you ever "complete" so people don't move on. A gaming service like WoW has a lot of similarities with a music rental service. If the publishers turned their servers off, people would no longer be able to play the game they've paid up to $600 to subscribe to.
It's nice that people are still playng wowc . Of course wowc is being updated at least once every two years. Wowc will be history in a couple years, whilst music lasts 'forever'. You don't want your musics, which lasts forever, existence depend on a service that is relatively temporarily.
To me it's overly clear that the rental approach is a faulty one and m$ is close to finding that out. In the meanwhile Apple is innovating on a rock solid selling service where people get to actually OWN their music.
Comments
Microsoft seems to think buyers are uninformed boobs who will just be persuaded by advertising crap. The new "pod" buyer is overwhelmingly educated by his peers and has used various playback devices and an advertisement is not likely to make a whit worth of difference at this point in history.
Ballmer is clueless as are his minions. It is obvious, so why doesn't the media just say it.
If I wanted to make a ZPod, I would look to beat Apple at its own game, not copy the game that was 2 generations back and then wait a year before updating it.
MS is becoming a laughing stock.
For some strange reason Apple thinks that computer buyers are also uniformed boobs who will just be persauaded by advertising crap. What are we upto 55 get a mac ads, I THINK WE GET THE IDEA THAT PCs have Viruses, but being boobs.....cannot wait for the next ad about it.
Have you used a Zune? Its not bad at all, radio and wireless is very nice. The only reason I will not get one is cause I cannot install Rockbox on it. I stopped running apples firmware a long time ago on my ipod, Itunes frankly sucks.
i regulary buy music on itunes.
i also load my ipod with music from my music library.
This is the best music experience that i had i a long while, and i am not even talking about the free podcast that can be loaded to my ipod.
In my own opinion, Itunes concept is the best concept ever for music. There is no way i would pay for a music subsription scheme like Microsoft is offering. Total.y ludicrous, and i bett that most of people would agree with me.
Microsoft is so has been !!!!!!
They are bloated with money and they waste it on such campaign.
Microsoft is so out of touch. I don't even consider iPods Digital Music Players ..they're Digital Media Players now. I'm always showing pictures on mine or using the address book sync.
I agree but let's not forget iTunes. Heck I can't synch my iPhone to more than one computer and it was the restictions that lead me to discovering limewire like the other 95% of the population. And as a software sound designer, I have seen my material on usenet groups and p2p and I have never complained about it. In fact, I have asked what users thought about it.
That said, having also been a National Marketing Director, I can't help but wonder if microsoft is planning donethung really big. They are leaving no stone unturned. While their last marketing efforts say no, they will flub it up, there us a small part of me that wonders, when the time is right, windows 7, a new partnership, if they will come out, full force and brand everywhere.
Its great to pull apart this ad when most poeple here probably have acquired thier 120gb of music illegally.
Now pretend for a sec that you were are a user who bought all thier music online, make sense now??
For the ones going on about how they have bought cds etc, well frankly with the music getting pumped out these days by artists, your are better off getting 2-3 tracks online that are quality instead of a CD that has those 3 tracks and about 9 crap tracks. That is why i purchase my music online, if i like it I buy it.
Having worked A&R for a label, those are called filler tracks and have seen artists have more hit songs pulled from one release and placed in another album to sell more albums. The releases, or hits, are each marketed as singles. These days it makes it(Internet) easier fir the artist. No more breaks anymore. If you have a hut sing, you can get exposure either in a movie I'd selling music. So much easier these days. I still dislike the iTunes lock down of the device and computer though. While you can authorize more than one computer, you can't synch the iPhone but to only one.
Fwiw. I worked in royalties and can go on record that there are still, unreleased Beatle songs. You will hear them someday. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
:-)
... i bought one to check it out, it felt so cheap. i took it to the gym one day and i decided it was garbage and just left it on the bench in the locker room. i didn't even care. in fact i pity the person that found it.
Problem is, it is most likely still there!!
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/04/28
And Microsoft has forgotten Pirate Bay! iPod works great with Pirate Bay! All for free (however legal not too sure...)
oh they haven't forgotten it. or that it is 100% illegal. which is why they don't talk about it.
You folks crack me up. If Apple had come out with a subscription service, you'd all be calling it the next best thing since sliced bread.
not it if was this same crap.
let's keep in mind that you can take music from the itunes store and burn it to CD, use it on other devices. you might not be able to through itunes, but you can always do it from the files. Last I checked, those Zune Pass songs only play on the Zune.
Laughable.
Here's MDN's take:
[B]Except that you do get to keep 10 whole songs per month
AND keep in mind that you have to use the 10 songs in that month. there's no rollover. You can't save up credits.
So lets say in January I download 100 songs with my zune pass. It would take me to October to buy all 100 with 'song credits', at the cost of $150. Even if they were top line songs, I could get them in one day for $129 from itunes. and now I own them. and I didn't have to pay any extra money to keep listening to them until I had credits to use.
. You'd lose access to those songs that you'd downloaded under the subscription, sure, but what did that cost you for, say, a year's use? $60?
not at all. the cost is independent of the number of tracks. to download a song (or a thousand) and use it for 12 months is $180. And only on your Zune.
I don't need to download 350 tracks and listen to them all weekend to decide if I like a band or not - I can use the preview function on iTunes and sample a few tracks and pretty much decide whether to investigate that band any further.
And now there's places like Pandora (which I play on my ipod touch all the time) that stream whole songs for free.
I've never bought an mp3 a day in my life. I've always bought a cd, or a discography (proud owner of all AC/DC and Bob Marley
this kind of thing has such a limited appeal it's ridiculous.
teenagers won't use it, they pirate music and/or buy a few singles for 99 cents, especially because the popular genres (pop, rap/r&b) only have good singles and the albums are trash.
older people won't use it because they are used to owning their music and can afford an album for $10, and they already have a large library of CDs that they've already ripped. they are also unlikely to like a lot of newer music so they'll be buying
oh yeah, and you lose all your music except for the 10 free downloads they give you a month once you cancel. that doesn't appeal to anybody and shows why there isn't a single subscription service that's really successful
the music industry as a whole is failing at competing with piracy, so instead of getting a subscription service i'm guessing most people will buy the occasional album if it's extremely good, and simply pirate the rest of the garbage the industry puts out.
The ZunePass does have merit, though. It IS cool that you can listen to anything whenever you want, and it IS cool that you can keep 10 DLs a month. Why not sell it for what it is and stop trying to pull the wool over people's eyes? People just AREN'T that stupid, and the 2 seconds it takes for someone to think "Now wait a minute, MS", you just lost them, maybe even for good, because you were trying to pull a fast one on them.
Wait, why am I giving MS advice...
People are commenting that rental music has always failed in the past and aren't analysing why the model has failed. Is that because people don't want to rent music or because the rented music won't play on the leading (70% market share) music player?
There's a lot of talk from people here that kids don't want rental services and don't have a credit card neccessary to use such a service. Perhaps these people should look at the success of World of Warcraft. WoW is a monthly subscription service primarily aimed at kids that makes its publisher $1 billion a year in revenue. Yes, I do mean $1,000,000,000.
If Apple came out with a similar scheme I gaurantee that it would succeed. They could easily offer quarterly or annual gift cards in stores to allow kids and teens to use the service. If you're young, you don't already have a music collection like we do. Why wouldn't they want access to millions of tracks?
Are you comparing a computer game to music? Well that explains why you prefer the rental service. You see a game (in general) is what you play and when you are finished you will probably never touch it again and move on to the next most recent game. With music however it's a different ball GAME. I can listen to music, that which I percieve to be good, over and over again. And if you have a normal size collection you can bring some variaty into your repetoir. If I could rent a game I would probably do that as well. But music? No way!
Thus a rental service for games, movies and maybe other products are good candidates to be lended to this service. But music sure isn't one of them. At least not to the majority.
Its great to pull apart this ad when most poeple here probably have acquired thier 120gb of music illegally.
My iTunes collection is over 120MB and 99% of was obtained legally. I've been buying music for decades and subscribe to eMusic, which gives me 90 tracks/month for $20 (absolutely legal tracks that I own forever, no matter what happens to eMusic). And it's all music I want, which probably wouldn't be true of Zune marketplace.
Subscription models are fine provided the people paying for them realize that there is no guarantee that the music they're enjoying now will be their's to listen to five years from now. It just doesn't seem to have much appeal. People want to own their music.
Are you comparing a computer game to music? Well that explains why you prefer the rental service. You see a game (in general) is what you play and when you are finished you will probably never touch it again and move on to the next most recent game. With music however it's a different ball GAME. I can listen to music, that which I percieve to be good, over and over again. And if you have a normal size collection you can bring some variaty into your repetoir. If I could rent a game I would probably do that as well. But music? No way!
Thus a rental service for games, movies and maybe other products are good candidates to be lended to this service. But music sure isn't one of them. At least not to the majority.
Just to back you up... games, movies, and tv shows I tend to use once and then rarely, if ever, again. Music I listened to as a kid I still listen to today so I want to own it. At this point in my life I don't buy much music, just maintain what I have so the idea of being tied into expiring account for the rest of my life is about as far from ideal as you can get.
My iTunes collection is over 120MB and 99% of was obtained legally. I've been buying music for decades and subscribe to eMusic, which gives me 90 tracks/month for $20 (absolutely legal tracks that I own forever, no matter what happens to eMusic). And it's all music I want, which probably wouldn't be true of Zune marketplace.
90 songs for $20/month is a service I could go for.
PS: I assume you mean GB.
90 songs for $20/month is a service I could go for.
PS: I assume you mean GB.
emusic is great. I have been a customer for almost 3 years now. Previously most of the stuff I was downloading or just couldn't find through iTunes was on emusic for MUCH MUCH cheaper! You won't find radio top-20 songs on there but I don't listen to that stuff anyway. I very rarely EVER go to iTunes, unless I am desperate.
You can't get the 90 songs for $20/month now but I think you can still get 70 for the same price. You can still get 90/month but it costs a little more for new customers. I think this is one of the very few times I have experienced where being an early adopter had some benefit. The really cool thing is you can re-download your songs if you need to. Like, if you download something on your work computer, you can go home and download them for your home computer too and they are all DRM-free. There are great ways to find new music based on your tastes. I just can't say enough good about em'.
Plus, if you are wanting to just check them out and get some free music, you can sign up and get 50 free songs to keep no matter what. You have to give a credit card number but if you decide you don't want to get the service you will not get charged and you get to keep your 50 songs. Not a bad deal if you want to check 'em out.
www.emusic.com
Are you comparing a computer game to music? Well that explains why you prefer the rental service. You see a game (in general) is what you play and when you are finished you will probably never touch it again and move on to the next most recent game.
I never said that I preferred the rental system and I was not comparing games in general to music. I was comparing MMORPGs to music.
I was just pointing out that kids and teenagers are used to paying monthly fees for services. World of Warcraft was released five years ago and people are playing it in greater numbers than ever before. It's not a game you ever "complete" so people don't move on. A gaming service like WoW has a lot of similarities with a music rental service. If the publishers turned their servers off, people would no longer be able to play the game they've paid up to $600 to subscribe to.
To most of you, thanks for your help in validating my opinion of so many Apple fans. And incidentally, I only posted because the positions taken in the comment section here are so rabidly irrational. I'm certainly not getting paid to post here, or anywhere--but Microsoft, if you're reading, I'll take some cash if you're so inclined.
You're not even getting paid to be here?
You must not have much to do if you have time to try and get mac owners on a mac board to not use their ipods with the music they already own, buy a windows PC, a Zune and subscribe to the $15 a month Zune Pass for the rest of their life (or until microsoft decides you don't need it any more).
Whoa.
I've wondered why Apple hasn't taken this issue head-on ages go, to get rid of it with barely any cost.
They did "take it on".
Reuters - Thu Apr 26, 2007 Jobs says Apple customers not into renting music
"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far."
Heeelarious. About 80% of the music on my 20GB iPod is ripped from CD's I already own.
In various legal (I believe) ways, about 90% of my 100+ GB's came from purchased CD's. Mostly I go to used CD stores, buy discs at half-price, rip them, go back to the store and trade them in in for half what I paid and buy more, making my net cost 1/4 or less of buying the CDs. Plus I ripped 15 years worth of the fave CD's I already owned (and could now trade in once ripped and backed to multiple drives).
And I admit checking CD's out of the public library to rip. Is this legal?
Finally, I supplement this with the occasional iTunes or physical media purchase.
So I don't have all the latest and most hyped, but I have a great music collection that works for me and didn't cost much at all.
These ads won't work, 1st, the average Kid can't afford to flush $14.99 a month just for music....
...Who the heck wants to subscribe to a $14.99 monthly service just for music in this freggin economy when you can use Pandora or bit torrent for free.
It's not just KIDS who can't afford all this "nickel and diming for "services," user fees, taxes, tolls, etc. that's getting tacked onto everything, e.g., do you iPhone users want to add ANOTHER $15/mo. to your $100+ monthly bills? Along with your Cable/satellite bill with separate fees for the box, and this digital add-on and that premium channel or service.
How much music can you really like and get to know anyway? And of that, how much can you remember when you change what you've downloaded from the buffet. Enjoyin and savoring art is not an "all you can eat" proposition for me anyway.
In another vein, if you start looking these little cash drains may be in more places than you realize. "Credit card insurance," that lifetime gym membership you haven't used in three years, subscriptions you don't need or read, membership "levels" in shopping services you're not using, "MobileMe" for a part of that you can get for free elsewhere, 99% of "extended warranties" on products, etc., etc.
I attacked this aspect of my life as soon as the big melt-down started and have hacked away several hundred a month (really) from my budget in "recurring expenses" and frankly, I notice little to no loss in my quality of life.
If Apple came out with a similar subscription service all of the posts in this thread would be totally different, you would all be praising the great Steve Jobs for his wonderful new idea.
You folks crack me up. If Apple had come out with a subscription service, you'd all be calling it the next best thing since sliced bread.
...Of course, Apple wouldn't charge only $14.95 a month, and they wouldn't give you 10 songs to keep in the bargain.
I agree that many would endorse what they now deny, but the second poster's unhinged bias comes out when he asserts Apple wouldn't be competitive with its offer. It wouldn't have become the leading music seller in America if it didn't have a good value for payment ratio.
In Captialist America Microsoft F@#ks YOU!
And Apple, I suppose, is a tax-payer supported government run program which develops and gives free wonderfully designed computers, phones, music players and media to the poor?
PS: you might want to learn to spell the name of the hated system that's made your entire historically unprecedented lifestyle possible.
....people are saying things like "In Captialist America Microsoft F@#ks YOU!"? And this from fans of a company in Apple that makes far more in profit of off them than even Microsoft makes.
Fascinating fanbase Apple has.
We are something, in whole and in our arguin' parts, ain't we?
I never said that I preferred the rental system and I was not comparing games in general to music. I was comparing MMORPGs to music.
I was just pointing out that kids and teenagers are used to paying monthly fees for services. World of Warcraft was released five years ago and people are playing it in greater numbers than ever before. It's not a game you ever "complete" so people don't move on. A gaming service like WoW has a lot of similarities with a music rental service. If the publishers turned their servers off, people would no longer be able to play the game they've paid up to $600 to subscribe to.
It's nice that people are still playng wowc . Of course wowc is being updated at least once every two years. Wowc will be history in a couple years, whilst music lasts 'forever'. You don't want your musics, which lasts forever, existence depend on a service that is relatively temporarily.
To me it's overly clear that the rental approach is a faulty one and m$ is close to finding that out. In the meanwhile Apple is innovating on a rock solid selling service where people get to actually OWN their music.