“Portal company Yahoo Inc. informed customers of its subscription music download service that it will increase pricing for users who transfer their tunes onto portable devices or CDs,” Matt Hines reports for PC Magazine. “The Sunnyvale, Calif., firm forwarded an e-mail to its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers late Thursday telling customers that it plans to double the fee it charges for the so-called unlimited service from $4.99 per month to $9.99 per month, for people who buy the service on an annual basis.”
Hines reports, “Yahoo said people who subscribe to the download service on a monthly basis will see their memberships increase from $6.99 per month to $11.99 per month. Unlike subscribers to Apple Computer Inc.’s market leading iTunes music service, who pay 99 cents per song download and own the music forever thereafter, Yahoo’s service more closely mimics the offerings of Napster LLC and RealNetworks Inc., which allow users to download as many songs as they wish for use on their computers, but levee additional fees for permanent ownership of the digital content. In addition to the higher subscription fee, Yahoo charges subscribers 79 cents per download for music they want to keep for usage on a portable device or to burn onto CDs.”
Hines reports, “Yahoo claims that its service still represents the best deal on the market, while Napster charges a similar $9.95 per-month fee, plus 80 cents for each permanent download. Real’s Rhapsody service costs $9.99 for downloads to computers, while its Rhapsody to Go package, which allows users to transfer content to mobile devices, retails for $14.95 per month.”
Full article here.
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Grabbing as much cash as they can to minimize losses before shutting it down? We prefer to own our music, rather than rent. We also prefer seamless compatibility with our iPods and software that works for both Macs and Windows PCs. For those reasons we’ll stick with iTunes Music Store, thanks.
Related articles:
BusinessWeek: Apple unlikely to launch music subscription service – August 15, 2005
Analyst: Apple will lose market share to subscription services, fact that iTunes is tied to iPod – May 17, 2005
Study shows Apple iTunes Music Store pay-per-download model preferred over subscription service – April 11, 2005
Now approaching my 40th birthday, my tastes in music are fairly settled.
I know what I like to listen to; I have an extensive vinyl music collection (but did away with the record deck years ago); boxes of CD in the attic (burnt onto an external hard drive via iTunes), and an expanding download music collection of a few favorite old vinyl albums, and also new bands that I’ve heard on the radio that interest me (The Killers, Engineers, Arctic Monkeys, etc).
Why would I pay a subscription service to provide me with a pay-to-listen service when I can listen for free to the radio, and then buy the songs I like on a per-song basis that I then get to keep forever?
Buying things outright just makes more sense…
I agree 100% zyzzyballuba. To me, a subscription service is not a means of building my music collection. It is a fantastic way of finding new music to buy (preferrably on CD). I still can’t figure out why these naysayers can’t understand that? I’d definitely pay a $10 per month fee to Apple to have the opportunity to do that. They would get a lot more of my money that way as I refuse to pay money for their low quality downloads. If I want to own music, I want it to be of the best quality.
Steve The Man is right again huh, scaringly right. We all know he’s a genius now we also he’s a prophet too. Amazing! Wish he’ll win over those greedy bastards at the recording companies & keep iTMS pricing the same. For those cheap heads who like to rent music, they simply dont use their heads right or something is really missing up there, y pay for nothing for your whole life? cuz if u stop paying you really own nothing literally, stupid. But then again, i bet most of them are peecee weenies who also like to own dell’s crappy cheesy peecee boxes and pay microsuck for it’s … eh suck os.
Unlike subscribers to Apple Computer Inc.’s market leading iTunes music service
A minor point, but of course I don’t “subscribe” to iTunes any more than I subscribe to Macy’s. Both have stuff to sell me, but I’m not sending them a check every month, which is what’s usually implied by the word “subscribe.” I’d overlook this gaffe in, say, the Poughkipsee Evening Journal, but PC Magazine ought to know the difference.
You guys should also check out http://emusic.com, it has over 750,000 tracks from independent labels and they’re adding more. I just started using it in addition to the iTunes music store this week and I’ve found some really cool music!
Their tracks don’t have any DRM in them and they are in .mp3 format so you can use them however you want. You get 50 free tracks and a two week trial period when you fist sign up. Their basic plan after that is $9.99 a month for 40 tracks. You can also sign up for $14.99 for 65 and $19.99 for 90 tracks.
So as far as “subscription” models go this one is done right, because you own the music! They have a number of excellent features that make it easy to find new types of music and create a community for music enthusiasts.
Anyway check it out and let me know what you think!
Thats http://www.emusic.com/
or
http://www.emusic.com/help/index.html
<b>Why doesn’t Apple do subscriptions</b>
1: Artists like to know Apple is trying to make them money. Subscriptions earn no money for artists and their labels thus they are less inclined to place their music with a subscription service. This is perhaps why Apple has the largest online collection.
2: Artists, Labels, and Apple are no dummies, they know people can rip the audio channel or use DRM cracks to get subscription music for free. In fact when it was reveled the M$ DRM Napster music was easily cracked using WinAmp and Output Stacker on PC’s, Napster CEO blew it off like “everyone knows that”. I’m sure the Labels and Artists were happy to hear that.
3: iTunes provides a sample which is quite long enough to determine if one wants to shed the mere dollar for the whole song. The deal is done and the music is yours to keep.
4: When Mactels arrive with their tough hardware based DRM in Intel chips, the DRM can be harder so subscriptions might become a reality.
At least nobody is fooling anyone here.
Subscriptions are a license to steal and everyone knows it.
Damn, This is gonna cut into my crack budget.
While all of you Apple dorks think you are getting a great deal paying 99 cents a download you could instead be paying 2 cents per meg. Most songs are only like 3-4 megs, right?
http://www.allofmp3.com
It’s a site based out of Moscow. You pay 2 cents per meg and the archive is huge, downloads are fast, with new stuff added daily. You can actually choose the bitrate you want up to 384kbps and file type. All depends on how big you want your file(fee)… You can also listen to a low quality version of the WHOLE ALBUM before you ever decide to buy it.. and if you’re really cheap you can just save those low quality files to your computer and pay nothing. If you buy every song on an album, the average price is like $1.27. Stop wasting your money. Welcome to the future. Tools.