Subscription Model for iTunes

By | September 5, 2007
1 Comment

Stephen has been arguing for some time that the trouble with iTunes is that allows only a 99-cents-a-pop ownership model of music rather than an all-you-can-eat rental model such as that provided by Napster.

Glenn Derene at Popular Mechanics is picking up the cause:

Nevertheless, the all-you-can-eat subscription model should work, and it would certainly make sense for real music lovers—the more music you listen to, the cheaper the overall cost per song becomes. What’s more, subscription certainly works for Netflix, which continues to grow with streaming subscription on demand. So why do users still want to pay 99 cents per song and not, say, $15 for a month’s worth of infinite songs? Would the iTunes Store work just as well as a subscription service?

On the other hand, if Apple does stick with a purchase-only pricing policy, they may venture beyond the “everything costs $.99″ model:

Which brings us to another of the big ideas circulating around the music industry these days: popularity pricing. This model makes the cost of each song scalable depending on demand—a song by a niche indie band could cost 40 cents while a song by a big act such as U2 would sell for $1.50. Letting the market drive pricing could be a good idea or a horribly bad one. In the Internet realm, where a world of illegal, free material is only a few mouse clicks away, high-priced content can become an incentive for bad behavior.

It will be interesting to see where Apple goes with these various licensing options. I’d certainly like to see them adopt something a little more Netflix-like for video content. I love being able to load TV shows and movies down to my iPod, but this is where, to me, both the price and the notion of “ownership” seem excessive. And apparently they strike Apple as being excessive, too. I note that as I’ve been working my way through Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, iTunes removes each episode I’ve watched from my iPod. All the episodes are all still there in my iTunes on the computer, should I decide to load them back onto the iPod, but what are the chances I’m going to do that? Apple is tacitly admitting that this is content I would not necessarily want permanent, ongoing access to.

So why sell it to me, then? Why not just let me rent it? I think Stephen is on to something, here.

  • MDarling

    If you assume an iPod owner will eventually upgrade- I do – then your current unit is a rental anyway.

    I like the so-called buy it and own it model for two reasons. First, though my tastes mychange and I may not always want the BeeGees Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, I might. And they might trash it.
    Worse- if I rent it, how do I move it to other format so I can play it elsewhere than the iPod?

    Now eventally the second may not matter. But it does now. For example- I would never choose to watch BG on an iPod screen- let alone my 15″ monitor. I want it ont e big screen- and I know of noez way to do that yet.