Apple business model for music is already working, with great customer satisfaction. There is no need to add a subscription option.

Been there, done that.

With the money I’ll move to Switzerland or cruise the world on yacht , ha-ha.

But I like what artists do, so I won’t.

I do not believe that the a universal rent vs own question is behind the relative lack of success of subscription models. There are people that are fine with not owning. Unfortunately, the majority of those people are also fine with not renting, but rather getting their music from the radio. Of the people that are willing to spend $10+ a month on music, it seems that a large majority of those prefer to own. For those that are willing to rent, at least a portion are spending their entire monthly music budget on subscription. So what if the store in question does not have all the music you want to hear? There are several genres that are not well represented (classical, jazz, experimental, electronic, etc). On the other end of the spectrum are people that spend a lot on music each month. They are more than likely to have a very wide range of musical interests and I doubt that any store that is based mostly on major labels is going to satisfy their tastes. More importantly, this group more than likely are collectors, so owning is probably pretty important to them. Basically, I think that subscriptions have a more limited appeal than the labels think.

…but as many have pointed out, a subscription service on iTS does not preclude the current model. The DRM issues seem like they could be a deal breakers, though, since Apple would like to move away from that. The other option, I guess, is streaming, which does not seem a satisfactory option.

you forgot #6. Go to jail for copyright infringement for selling music you don’t a mechanical license for.

I bet the last time that Windows Media was cracked you saw a huge increase in the “trial subscriptions”. You can download a lot of music from napster during a trial, in my case, close to 4 gig. All drm free now.

That is very un-Apple.

Notice that customers were not asking for an iPod. Portable mp3 players was a ridiculous idea.

Rental, no. I went that route with Yahoo. End the subscription and “poof”, there go your tracks.

Subscription-to-own is the way to go.

- 256 bit encoded music
- DRM-free music

AKA – The EMI deal. Give us that and we’ll give you a subscription service.

Not many current iTunes users would use the service, while it would pull many off of Napster and the like to iTunes and likely iPods – as the subscription service would only work with iPods of course.

In another two years time, when Napster and Rhapsody are gone, and Yahoo has hardly any music users left, Apple can come back to the contract agreements, and put the labels over a barrel and can the subscription service – if Apple so chooses. Apple would do so if the subsription model showed no life whatsoever, and declare to the public how dead a solution that is. the less than 5% of those people can go buy a Zune and use that service… Exactly, those subscribers are going nowhere, and will be buying their music from now on.

at 2 billion songs that’s a whole lot you can buy with the 600 million EXTRA in revenue from iTunes….

600 million dollars divided by $15/month = 3.33 million subscribers to equal that in gross sales…not to mention the overhead to support it.

for indie artists, emusic = blech

“Decades of charging people full CD prices for one, two, perhaps three good songs and the rest of the album is filler material”

- Hmm, the albums that I buy seem to have a lot more than one or two good songs. Perhaps you should stop listening to crappy music. If the price was too high, people wouldn’t be paying it. The market tends to work these things out.

“playing the “Let’s switch formats on them, again”: 78′s, 45′s/LP’s, 8-Track, Cassette, CD’s, etc.”

- Incidentally, each format is better than the previous one, and the previously purchased music didn’t stop working once a new format was released. New formats are also not an issue. In fact, it is to be expected.

“calling their customers thieves and crooks, suing old-ladies and 10-years old”

- Of course, the customers that they called thieves and crooks were in fact thieves and crooks. Additionally, ignorance is not a justification for crime.

“a bunch of no-talent hacks who owe their position and lively hood to the skills, talents and creativity of musicians who they routinely screw out of fruits of their labor.”

- And yet those artists that are getting routinely screwed out of fruits of their labor keep signing more contracts and coming back for more.

Why? Ok, Let’s say I subscribe to the iTunes Subscription model, and I also buy a license to use Audio Hijack. I start downloading all the music I could possibly want, use Audio Hijack to convert it to whichever format I want. Cancel the subscription.

Basically, the entire recording industry has hosed themselves no matter what they do.

Decades of charging people full CD prices for one, two, perhaps three good songs and the rest of the album is filler material, playing the “Let’s switch formats on them, again”: 78′s, 45′s/LP’s, 8-Track, Cassette, CD’s, etc., calling their customers thieves and crooks, suing old-ladies and 10-years old has pushed the buying public to have little sympathy for a bunch of no-talent hacks who owe their position and lively hood to the skills, talents and creativity of musicians who they routinely screw out of fruits of their labor.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badfinger#Death_and_decline

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJNnLIPZ_n4

The thing that will lead to the music executives downfall?

Their own greed and entitlement mindset [namely that the music buying public owes them their livelyhood].

Don’t let the door hit your collective arses on the way out fellas. [Not that we're worried about your posterior mind you, but we don't want to have to replace the door!]

Hano

- Irrelevant.

“Because the real reason the iPod is so popular has nothing to do with the fact that you own, not rent, what is on it.”

- This statement is more true than I think you realize. The success of the iPod does in fact have little to do with how people acquire their music.

I pay $20 a month for a subscription to blockbusters so I can stop and get movies on the way home and hold onto them till i finish them. I skipped Netflicks for this reason alone – I never know what i want to watch till the last minute. Apple can let me start watching my show in minutes.

I would drop blockbuster like a bad habit. I still would buy DVD’s for keepers, but I would never rent another one if I could do it from an Apple TV instead.

Man these guys are idiots. I would like to know how you get to be the big CEO with the big Paycheque and still be so effing dense! Cause I can play dense if I need to, and come up with half-assed ideas as well. Where do I send my resume? This working hard and being held accountable for my performance, for puny pay, is starting to wear a little thin.

MW: help, as in will someone help these nutjobs get a clue

MDN magic word: ‘parts’ as in buy your music in parts.

Anyway it was just a idea what people could do with subscriptions.

I hope Jobs tells them -publicly – to stuff the idea back from wherever it came from.

2: Set up a Mac Octo Pro to strip off the DRM.

3: Sell the Octo Pro.

4: Sell the music and the Octo Pro.

5: PROFIT $$$$$$$