“Chris Gorog is convinced that people won’t continue to pay $1 a song for online music. That is despite Apple’s string of recent achievements, including 200 million songs sold at its iTunes Music Store, and nearly 4 million iPod digital music players moved into consumers’ homes in 2004,” Jefferson Graham writes for USA Today. “Gorog runs Apple rival Napster, which offers digital downloads and a music subscription deal. Consumers get unlimited access to listen to 700,000 songs for $9.95 monthly.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple had probably come very close to or exceeded 4 million iPod units sold in the last quarter alone.
“The hitch is that to move songs onto a portable digital device or to a CD costs extra: $1 a song. That’s one of the reasons digital music fans have not taken to the subscription model – also offered by Real Networks’ Rhapsody – in a big way. But Gorog thinks that will change next year. And he has other heavyweights such as Yahoo and Microsoft in his corner,” Graham writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Apple sees the subscription model becoming popular, do you think they might have a plan for instituting that option via the iTunes Music Store? Wouldn’t their market-dominating position pretty much demand that they have already thought of this very obvious option and have a plan ready to go?
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned the new Napster ad that’s been playing non-stop on some cable TV channels. Great choice of spokesperson, huh? Yeah, I wanna be just like the office social-reject who looks like he never bathes! Sign me up, Napster!
think about a portable subscription service with both on-demand and broadcast streaming with a-la-carte options for those who really want to own your music.. for $15.00 a month for access to one million + songs.. that’s not too shabby.. you ipod people are sooo brainwashed! think ahead
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Giofoto:
I think you just coined a term, my friend. Congratulations.
There’s two types of people in this world: floaters and swimmers
– or at least when it comes to music
Now, Microsoft’s Janus is supposed to let you transfer your “rented” music to certain as-yet-unmentioned (and probably unreleased, wonder how much marketshare they have) WMA players. The SMART thing to do would be to allow subscribers to have access to all the content on their portable player for the same rate.
This means by default (because they won’t do what’s smart) that they will have a tiered subscription plan based on where you want to be able to transfer your tunes to.
My favorite quote :
“We sell hundreds of downloads,” Goldberg says. “But we don’t make money on them. Subscriptions is a much better business for us.”
HUNDREDS??? 😀 Wow…
At least he’s honest.