What is Digg?51 Comments
- lane.montgomery, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Just so everyone knows, I'm not trying to submit a dupe.
The discounted season pass applies to all shows, not just the Daily Show and Colbert Report. - radixus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I hope to god iTunes doesn't treat music like cable - list to what you want for a monthly fee. I do not want to RENT my music . . . . I want to own it, and be able to do what I want with that music file. True Apple's current DRM doesn't give you a 100% freedom, but at least you own the tracks you purchase!
The day Apples moves to a monthly service is the day I'll go back to file-sharing services to get my music.
I just don't understand the people who sign up for Napster or Real's music service. What happens if there's a month where nothing you enjoy is released and everything that has already been released you've downloaded. You just spent how much they charge for a month of no new music at all!
On the other hand, this concept of that they are pushing for TV shows might work. We'll see. - MrManFitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I can't wait until this replaces cable. Everyone has always wanted ala cable cable service, where you could only pay for the channels you watch, so I can't imagine it will be long until the iTMS can offer something comparable that will be more convenient and less expensive than cable.
- bfioca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well, it's more than a VCR - there are no commercials, and it's podcast easy... It's more like enhanced TiVo service. If you're like me and you only like to watch a handfull of shows, this is cheaper than paying $50 for cable + $10 for TiVo. Is it more convenient though? Yes if you like to watch shows on your laptop or have a mac mini hooked up to your TV... otherwise, I'm not so sure. I think the price will come down if a lot of people subscribe, and maybe ultimately this sort of thing will replace cable.
- bobmcsmith, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Bring it to the Canadian iTMS!
- deej5871, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I agree that subscriptions could work for TV shows and maybe even movies (if there ever is an iTunes Movie Store) but I don't see it working for music. I don't know about everyone else but I usually only watch an episode of a show once and then I'm waiting for the next, whereas with music I can listen to the same song many many times. That's why it makes sense that people own their music rather than just rent it, but the rent/subscription model could work well with TV shows and obviously movies (since people rent movies anyway).
- OsakaWilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am more than ready to give Apple my money for TV shows, but since I live in Japan, Apple will not allow me to buy them. You'd think that people living abroad would be the biggest paying market for TV shows that Americans can see for free. Why is this situation like this? Why are they excluding us from the market? I buy products online constantly (Audible.com, Amazon, etc.) but when I try to buy from Apple, I get the "Sorry, we don't want you as a customer because you aren't in America" screen. No digg until they let me give them my money!
- Judman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I can't see any shows other than those two with the season passes. Though I'm going to keep looking.
- docxxvi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it'll never make it to the poxy UK apple store! theyre still stuck back in the 80's along with the brits frikken crap taste in music. why in this day and age we cant get US TV programming globally without having to resort to the eternal wait (aka bitttorrent) i dont know. I cant bleeding wait for this regionalisation issue to just go away!
(read as challenge to tv networks to find a new better revenue model than just advertising!) - variant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, it looks like many of you are going to be disappointed. Prices for some of these TV shows are much higher than Daily Show and Colbert Report - for example, Lost Season 2 is $30, with Season 1 at $35. The Office Season 2 is $33.83. Obviously the per episode cost for these popular shows is nowhere close to the ~$0.62/episode cost of the Daily Show. Unless you have to have the episodes right after they air, you're better off waiting for the DVD to come out.
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I was just about to say "I bet they didn't enable it in Canada"... Oh, there's a shock...
Would be nice if they'd get their licensing worked out - the alternative is just for me to download it all via bittorrent for free... - GirSaysDoom13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3i third that motion! canada should have the iTunes Video Store, we have all of the shows on the store and I think all of the channels availible in canada, so licencing shouldn't be that much of a problem.
fingers crossed for canada on April 1st! - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So you're saying you'd rather pay $50/month for 22 minutes of content per every 30 minutes of material. While you are getting a wider variety in your media, you're also paying for it more and more with advertising and things like themesongs/credits which decrease from the actual running time of the content.
Personally, I'm the kind of guy who likes DVDs over Theaters. I like to see my media whenever I want, with as little disturbance as possible. So this model works great for me, especially seeing as I can buy one episode and decide if I like the show, then buy the whole season and watch it at my leisure (and not have to buy an extra box to catch it and wade through the commericals). But YMMV. - Chasin_Fat_Kids, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I agree with you there - baby steps.
I love it they call it "multi-pass" reminds me of The Fifth Element. "Corban Dallas Multi-Pass?"
Calling it a Multi-Pass for one show doen't make sense - maybe they have plans for a 5 shows a month type plan setup; lets hope so! - benig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Some of you guys are just straight up strange and greedy. You aren't renting these movies, you are buying them and can watch them as many times as you want forever. This is a medium between 100% subscription based and download per item that keeps both sides happy
- TimmyGUNZ, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5It's only a matter of time until this happens with music.
iTunes needs the 2 tiers of service. Make people treat their music like their cable...all you can watch (listen to) for one monthly fee.
I think the model can work well if priced right ($9.99 - $14.99/month). It won't work for Napster, Yahoo! or any other company that doesn't support iPod. - drum_bum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I am not going to pay $9.99 for a 16 episodes of one show. That is more than a quarter of what I pay for cable and there I get all the episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert Report and every other show on iTunes with my cable subscription. I definitely prefer the "all you can eat" model. I don't like the subscription for music but I wouldn't mind it for TV because I don't always want to see the same show more than once and if I cancel the subscription I won't miss the episode of the Daily Show from 3 months ago like I would a good song.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The point is, he (and I) don't want to buy a license to our media that expires. We think if we buy a license to the media, it should be a permanant license, and we should be able to shift it to whatever format we want. And it's not that unreasonable seeing as all of this time before, up until very, very recently, that's all we did.
I (and probably him too) see the Networks charging more money for the same service with a negative change in quality. This is just plain backwards in business logic, but the media companies get away with it because they control the media, and have the money to control the law. - stevex0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thats pretty cool. I will admit I download a decent amount of tv and convert it to an ipod format to watch on the train to work. I do think I would pay for a show that I wanted to see if I could have it come to me in an rss feed in a format that would play on my ipod as soon as the show was shown on tv. This is exactly an example of how the media companies can beat piracy. Simply make quality content available in a way that is so convenient that it is acctually more trouble to pirate than to purchase in a legal way.
- cerisaac, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3It must be noted that this is for select shows only and that the prices will probably be more then $9.99 for shows like Lost and Desperate House Wives.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Just get Tunebite. If you don't want to "rent" your music.
- tetrax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I don't understand why the geek elite are so anti-subscription music services. Why not consider these supplementary services to your music collection? For less than the price of 1 CD a month, you get access to a vast library of stuff you might want to listen to occasionally, but not necessarily own. Or, you can sample the stuff you might want to buy -- on physical, non-DRM'ed CD -- before you buy.
Full disclaimer: I work for Real. No, I don't have horns. - zweben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I bought both the Daily Show and Colbert Report subscriptions. 30 shows for $20? That's 66ยข a show. $2 an hour. As they come out. Well worth it!
- MaxwellH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I seriously feel that people are underestimating their cable bills. Either that, or I'm getting seriously screwed. I've had cable in two different markets (Chicago, San Antonio), and the price of cable--the bottom line price, after they add in a bunch of hocus pocus, taxes, box rental--for all the cable channels and one movie channel is more like $75 nowadays. Seriously...take a look. If you only watch a handful of shows, like I do, then it's a rip-off. Being able to buy complete seasons of shows via ITMS is a pretty great concept...
- mightymouse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Er, what happened to the free show thing with commercials on itunes? When is that coming out *tear*
- tavisjohn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Works even better for Napster.
iTunes = 2x Realtime Conversion
Napster = 4x Realtime Conversion - penguindude15, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1now the only obstacle for apple is to make sure all of the record companies sign up for another few years. Sony might have it in for them....
- yllabianbitpipe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Count me in the supporter of this pay-as-you go model. I don't subscribe to cable not because it's too expensive, but because I'd become a couch potato if I did. There is an added cost over just the cable bill -- all the hours wasted channel surfing and settling on some Animal Planet stupidity involving lemurs.
There are really only two shows I watch regularly anyhow, and one is available through iTunes and the other one I can get off network TV. So by buying the one program, I save a bundle by not getting cable and the TV season with new episodes really is only part of the year anyhow. So keep the iTunes shows coming. - alxdman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2once the crtc gets there heads out of there asses and allow it. Prolly be a bit longer, how long did it take the crtc to allow the music store, and xm radio too...
Cant wait till it does come to Canada. - nutshell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yeah it's a hard pill to swallow paying for cable and then dolling out $10 a month just for one show. I would pay more than $15 for an all you can eat service.
- bfioca, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Although I wonder if it makes any difference that the current ones are from Comedy Central... maybe they don't care that much about per-show profits?
- Meowmix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I like this model.
There are not very many shows I watch, and as a result I just get NetFlix instead of cable.
I think they need to expand this, but make it so for every show you are subscribe to, it gets a little cheaper. I.E., if you only subscribe to one show, it's $15 or something, two it's $12/show, and three $10/show.
Maybe cheaper. Hopefully cheaper. - gregmills, on 12/27/2007, -0/+0I realize this is an old post but this article appears high in Google search results for "itunes season pass." I would like to add my experience for the consideration of future readers.
I purchased a season pass and for two weeks in a row the current episode of the show was delayed more than 48 hours before it appeared in the iTunes store. The season finale which aired on Sunday is still not in the store on Thursday. Apple's response has been to point me to their generic iTunes "feedback" form. Buyer beware. - bfioca, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Those prices are for the "Buy All Episodes" button that's currently there. The shows you mentioned haven't been offered as multi-pass subscriptions yet. It's too early to tell what they'll charge for them. I suspect they'll offer them at a discount, though.
- tbrubaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+03. I live overseas. I would gladly donate money to Comedy Central to offset the costs of TDS and TCR that I conveniently subscribe to via RSS and bittorrent. But I won't pay for low res DRM'ed content from iTMS. I'll stick to buying the best of DVD's as my contribution.
I have also considered installing a TiVO and Slingbox at my mom's in the US and paying her cable bill but that is also too inndirect. Please just let me donate money directly to the channels making the content. That's how I pay for my public radio news shows and I like it that way. - osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Never bought more than one song on iTunes, but not having cable I may be tempted to look into this some more :)
- frontbrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think that a renting model is fine for movies and TV shows, I only ever watch most TV shows and movies one time. I would like to be able to watch it on my TV though. I don't even care about DRM, I am just renting anyway
For music rental may be ok but it would be hard for me to be able to listen on whatever device I want wherever I want. So, for music I want to buy it, and I don't want DRM, because I want to be able to listen to it on any player or computer operating system I want. I don't download music illegally any more. I don't download it legally either, because I think it is overpriced. Once in a while I will buy CDs (usually used) at a reasonable price $5-$7. I am looking into the non-DRM online music stores. I think there needs to be some price-break for pre-paying for music downloads (i.e. pay $15/month and get X free downloads, then $1 or $0.50 per song after that, if it were billed all at once it would cut down on credit card processing costs too I believe).
I really think the music industry would make more money if they opened up a bit and just made it easier to download and use legal music. The marginal cost of a downloaded recording is extremely low (bandwidth), so once you have already put in the overhead costs, it seems that moving the price cheaper would increase profits. Make it cheap and easy and most people won't bother to pirate music that much anymore. There will always be sharing between friends and sharing is good because it is really cheap marketing. - jellocat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0no. 6.0.4 was released a week or two ago. oops you, but that's okay. i am not seeing the the season subscriptions yet (minus the CC stuff), just the website, anybody else see something?
- spudnik187, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Has anyone found this Multi-pass with any other shows than the two mentioned from Comedy Central? I don't see the option on any other shows.
- kevbryant, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2i agree, this is nothing more than a pricy replacement of a vcr. i get 60 channels for 40 a month and i can record whatever i want, and watch it whenever i want, not to mention i can watch it on a tv, not just my ipod or in itunes. but, at least theyre beginning to think a little
- aresef, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1*whips out card, starts speaking in funny accent*
Multi-pass. - krakelohm, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I agree, but this is highly unrealistic.
- digitalgopher, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4This is a step forward, but not all the way there. It should be $10/month or $15/month for "all you can eat" for ALL shows the way music subscription services work. This only get us half way there.
- etherdog, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3New iTunes 6.0.4 released just now.
- worthawholebean, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2You don't actually own your music files. Everything is licensed, sublicensed, sublicensed, licensed, and licensed again.
Check out the new & improved 
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