“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?