mediabiz.blogs.cnnmoney.com — Les Ottolenghi, CEO of INTENT MediaWorks, said he’s had meetings with people from Apple and he believes the company will announce a subscription service for iTunes within the next six months. “I think Apple is seriously considering a subscription offering right now even though they will probably tell you otherwise
Apr 12, 2007 View in Crawl 4
gr00vyApr 12, 2007
I for one would be the recording companies wet dream. I would not only rent but I would buy. There is quite a bit, I would never care if I owned, there is quite a bit that I do.However, this would be a major change at Apple. None of the current 100 million Ipods could support it. There were many early engineering issues with the Ipod especially arourn DRM. They went for a very loose model with the Ipod. Music tended to be copied only one way, and music was not tied to any given ipod and could be universally played on all Ipods. This is because there is *not* a whole lot of DRM in the tiny machines. Most importantly there is not a secure clock, which is require if we are going to reliably expire the music. (This clock does exist on the Play4sure machines, and will likely be in zune2.0 as well).Now it is possible that this will be added to the Iphone, and future Ipods, especially IPods based on the Iphone architecture, and that subscriptions will be rolled out overtime to those users and the "early" adopters be damned. Or Apple will continue to ignore this type of DRM and never have it, preferring to move to no-drm as it looks like the EU wants the world to move, (and well, the customer, but we hardly freaking matter. And Time expired music is absolutely a DRM feature).
jeffreylebowskiApr 12, 2007
People pay for music? I'm confused.
tackleApr 12, 2007
Come on guys.. whats wrong with a subscription service? It is AWESOME..... because.... it is from Apple. I thought we all agreed that it is ok to take it in the a** as long as it is Apple who is giving it.
akatsukiApr 13, 2007
A subscription service is probably more of a rival to XM/Sirius/other radio service. I have no problem with my music disappearing if I approach it from the build-my-own-radio-station approach. I think $20 a month would be pretty reasonable for this level of service, but it should be pretty unlimited in amount and number to download.
crankymcguyApr 13, 2007
This is most likely nothing more than the labels pressuring Apple for subscriptions again. Every time they approach negotiation time stories like this appear in the press with somebody "in the know" declaring Apple is going to be enabling subscriptions any minute.Not likely now that Apple is pushing DRM free music. How can you have subscriptions without DRM?
hoos30Apr 13, 2007
I have an Ipod, an iRiver Playsforsure device and a Sandisk e260Rhapsody device.The Ipod hasn't been turned on for over a year. My Rhapsody experience fits my musical needs FAR, FAR better than iTunes ever could. As has been stated above, with the subscribtion model you get to try new music "risk free". I've discovered hundreds of new artists this way. If I like it enough, I can buy it at a slight discount (.89) and keep it forever.It wasn't all peaches and cream as the iRiver and Playsforsure didn't get along all of the time. More like 85%, which still sucks. Enter the Sandisk Sansa. This thing will play 100% and it is dual DRM, meaning it can play PFS or Real's own .rax format, which enables the best feature of the Sansa: Rhapsody Channels. Now, I don't even have to go fishing for new music...everytime I sync the device, it automatically loads music from different channels that I set up. Like a track? Just click to add it to your library or purchase it.Apple may have won the music war with their marketing and design skills, but they are far behind on the technology front and I don't think Jobs will take any chances. If he has to go subscription to protect the iPod empire, he will.
theaaxMar 19, 2008
The only reason people don't like a subscription service is because iTunes doesn't have it. I never wanted a subscription service either. I was happy paying iTunes for one CD a month. Of course, I spent an hour analyzing the 30 second clips of a song before deciding to buy it and half the music I couldn't decide on b/c 30 seconds doesn't really tell you much about a song. But hey, I have an iPod and that's the way it is. No big deal.But then I was converting my 80's cassette tapes to MP3 and wasn't real happy with the quality. I wanted to buy the music but didn't want to drop hundreds of dollars for songs I only listen to once a year (if that much). So I took a chance on Rhapsody trial subscription to see what I could download from them. Man, I haven't looked back since. I download so much music now that I can't imagine using iTunes and listening to their ridiculous 30 second clips to decide if I like a song enough to spend 99 cents. Hell, if I find an artist I like, I download their currect CD and every CD they ever made. Then I just delete what I don't like. I'll sit at home and queue up artists I never heard of just to see what they sound like. It's a freedom of music that is worth every penny to me. If I'm in the mood for hip-hop, I download tons of hip-hop. Maybe I have some friends over for dinner and they like the blues? Download a half dozen blues CDs and put them on shuffle. The next day I delete them. Didn't cost me a dime extra. How can you complain about that????Yes, everyone says "I want to keep my music." That's true for about two months. Guess how many CDs Brittney and Whitney and Akon have sold. Millions! Guess how many people are listening to them right now. Nobody. "I want to keep my music. I want to own it." Right. Most artists are here today and gone tomorrow. A year from now no one is listening to them. Music is good for three months and then you have all new favorites that you are listening to. Hell, my CD collection from the 90's is over 200 CDs. That's over $2,000 I spent in the 90s. How many do I listen to today? Just a few. I would have been much better off just using a subscription service.Anyway, give me iTunes subscription so I can play them on my iPod!!!! If you want to buy each CD and spend and hour listening to 30 second clips to decide which songs you like, great. But let me have my subscriptions so I can download unlimited music anytime I like!!!!