Total Music: Lifetime Music Subscriptions from Universal & Co.
Universal and other media companies are gathering to offer an alternative to iTunes with a service called "Total Music," a subscription-based service that would be baked into the price of each music-playing device. I like the idea in theory, but wonder if the service, which will certainly be locked per-device and possibly non-transferable to new owners, will be too high.
From Business Week:
The big question is whether the makers of music players and phones can charge enough to cover the cost of baking in the subscription. Under one scenario industry insiders figure the cost per player would amount to about $90. They arrived at that number by assuming people hang on to a music player or phone for 18 months before upgrading. Eighteen times a $5 subscription fee equals $90. There is precedent here. When Microsoft was looking to launch a subscription service for Zune, Morris played hardball. He got the tech giant to fork over $1 for every player sold, plus royalties. Total Music would take that concept even further. "If the object is to wrest control of the market from Steve Jobs," says Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, "this is a credible way to try it."
Universal Music Takes on iTunes [BusinessWeek.com] (Snazzy new logo, Business Week! Or is it BusinessWeek? Lern2kern.)
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Stupid. Also dumb. Now, offer a $5 per month subscription service that I can use with ALL of my devices and that provides more than Universal music and I would consider it. But tacking $90 on to the price of each of my music playing devices? That's a great deal! For Universal.
Not sure how anyone on BoingBoing "likes the idea in theory" considering the theory relies on DRM and device lock-in (as every subscription model has to, in theory :p ), both issues that BoingBoing has historically expressed extreme..uh..dislike? :P
Well, totoro, not everyone on Boing Boing is the exact same person with the exact same thoughts on the matter. Personally I find music subscription services fairly compelling, even with DRM. Of course because you're not actually buying any music, just renting it, the service would need to be pretty cheap to make it worthwhile.
I think DRM is a lost cause, but I also know that the market can't make it all go away at once. And if someone made a device that could have access to all music, ever, for $5 a month, even if it was locked in, it would be hard to point at that and say "That's just not worth it."
The only reason this makes sense is b/c of the sad truth that 99.99999% of music is as disposable as these devices are.
The subscription music model is compelling to about 2 million Americans' or about .74% of Americans and that is the extent of it. They have given it away for free at colleges and launched it at $7.99 and companies like Yahoo, Real, MS, Creative, MTV, Rolling Stone have all tried their hand at it and - they basically take away share from that 2 million TOTAL population - why? The people who like music enough to listen but NOT to own is 2 million people. The people who want to play professional DJ with tracks they do not own is 2 million people.
People can pay $10 a month for professional comercial free radio from satellites.
People can essentially listen for free on the internet or something called a radio to professonally programmed tracks.
Or the reason iPods and a few other DAP's are popular because people do NOT want to listen to "professionally" programmed stations and prefer either to listen to music they already know OR to check in on community sites and add new music.
iTunes has sold 3 BILLION tracks not because people woke up one day and said, humm, I'd really like some DRM and after carefully analysis with friends and colleagues, I have decided Fairplay is the best ... rather, it's the SIMPLEST choice because even "free/illegal" tracks from p2p sites are not always the simplest (downloading ... 2 days and 17 hours ...) or just spend $.99 and have in 2 minutes and it's smart enough to sync and load onto my player.
The music industry is bizarrely afraid of Apple & iTunes for NO REASON. Because if tomorrow, iTunes store was shut down, how many iPod owners would not know how to load music or not learn by surfing the internet in 3 minutes?
iTunes is not exclusive anything - just look at the new Amazon store - you can launch a new music store in days or weeks (if you had enough money & servers) but WM sells 25% of CD's in the US - in most towns, how many people are willing to open a new store to compete against them?
The music industry seems to love the physical CD for some reason even though it has no DRM (harder to track to pay royalties?) and loathes and is scared of digital ... WTH?
We are morons. We will keep buying the same stuff as long as its convenient. We will pay $2 for $.11 of tap water in a bottle because it's cold and 2 feet away from us instead of walking 10 feet to drink from a fountain ... JUST SELL IT TO US!