Apple Mulls Flat-Rate "Unlimited Music" Option 355
Mike writes "Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about an 'all you can eat' model for buying music that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices. Finally, it looks like the industry (or at least Apple) is 'getting it'. The real question is not whether the big music companies will go for it, but rather, who will be the first one to get smart and agree to offer it?"
As long as (Score:5, Insightful)
Big companies are the supplier... (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Big companies still supply the music. The ITunes store would go out of business overnight of all of the labels pulled their songs from it. There are still some indie bands out there, but in terms of sheer scale, the big companies still hold many of the cards. Granted, it would be foolish of them to cut up a revenue stream, but the big companies still have the product to sell, and their input should not be dismissed.
Never going to happen with me, friend (Score:5, Insightful)
"Getting it"? (Score:4, Insightful)
What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has the most successful internet music distribution system available. From the millions of iPods sold to the billions of songs sold on iTunes. And needless to say, everyone else who has tried the "all you can eat" music pricing model has failed.
So please inform me exactly what Apple is finally getting! Thanks. I won't be holding my breath.
The first line in the article contains a key word (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As long as (Score:5, Insightful)
free music for life? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think someone's a bit naive here... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a bit naive (and I don't think it's Steve Jobs): people tend to eat more at a smorgasbord than if they have to pay for each entree, and this effect would be even greater when they have room for thousands of entrees in their digital stomachs.
Re:Free? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are neither getting a product free of charge (gratis), or having unlimited access with the ability to use the music freely forever, like you would expect when purchasing a DRM-free mp3 or CD (libre).
Re:This is just Subscription model 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
With this kind of service, DRM is a big turnoff. But I am not sure how this service could possibly be offered without DRM. The need for a special client program is also a turnoff: why not just provide the catalogue on a website and rely on the media player for DRM authentication?
Re:Pay for music? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:I think someone's a bit naive here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Music Industry feels "Entitled"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Entitled to something!? Are you kidding me? Entitled to a middle finger up their ass maybe. Certainly not entitled to stealing the profits of another company's successful product.
I'm not sure it's Apple that's thinking about this but rather the Music companies trying to push this on Apple. What they'd really want is a monthly fee from you every month of every year for the rest of your life. Oh and if you decide to stop paying, well then you're shit out of luck. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with paying for the music I want once and keeping it forever.
Re:As long as (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you on crack? DRMd music is not free as in freedom.
This scheme is nothing more than a pay-up-front subscription service - one copied from Nokia at that.
Labels Already Don't Like iTunes - Never Happen (Score:3, Insightful)
But not everyone sees Apple's all-or-nothing approach in such benign terms. The music and film industries, in particular, worry that Jobs has become a gatekeeper for all digital content. Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music, has accused iTunes of leaving labels powerless to negotiate with it. (Ironically, it was the labels themselves that insisted on the DRM that confines iTunes purchases to the iPod, and that they now protest.) "Apple has destroyed the music business," NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker told an audience at Syracuse University. "If we don't take control on the video side, [they'll] do the same." At a media business conference held during the early days of the Hollywood writers' strike, Michael Eisner argued that Apple was the union's real enemy: "[The studios] make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners. They make all these kinds of things, and who's making money? Apple!"
The labels have already locked themselves into Steve's golden iHandcuffs with DRM on the iPod + iTunes platform with fixed price songs so they will be very careful before they give over even more power to Apple to run their business, or what is left of it anyway. I do not see them agreeing to a monthly subscription for the entire iTunes catalogs, such a move would signal complete and utter desperation on the part of the music labels.
One-time payment less than 2 months of Rhapsody? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rhapsody costs $12-$15 a month (depending on your options), and you can listen to the music as long as you keep paying the monthly fee. If Apple can actually talk the big labels into granting unlimited lifetime downloads of music, that you can keep, for $20... I'll be stunned. That's a huge value there. Even at $80 that's a huge value.
I could see the labels going for a $20-per-iPod tax, maybe. I can't see them going for a special model that costs $20 extra. You just know that anyone who buys the $20 extra model is going to actually use the service. Maybe the statistics show that currently the average customer buys $20 worth of songs, but this all-you-can-eat plan slices away any future chance of that dollar amount going up. We're talking about an industry that is pricing CDs at $20... can Apple really get them to do this?
P.S. If you have never tried an all-you-can-eat music service, I suggest you try the two-week free trial for Rhapsody. You will probably see the appeal. It's easy and fun to find new music. Sometimes I don't make up my mind whether I like something until I play it all the way through a few times; it's nice to be able to do that.
http://learn.rhapsody.com/ [rhapsody.com]
Disclaimer: I don't work for Rhapsody but I do work for the company that owns it.
steveha
Hey Apple, ask EMusic before you try this (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that once you make it unlimited, a small but not insignificant percentage of users will immediately attempt to download the entire iTunes library. Hey, disk space is cheap, why not try, if there's no additional charge per track?
The only way this might work is if Apple doesn't have to pay even 1 cent to the record companies per download for people who download tracks under the unlimited plan. At least that way their only cost bandwidth.
Welcome to eMusic, circa 1999 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Getting it"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As long as (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't hurting consumers with this offer.
They aren't hurting competitors with this offer.
They aren't hurting affiliates with this offer.
Therefore there is nothing illegally anticompetitive with this offer.
They would need to be using their iPod monopoly to hurt the consumer; like raising prices of iPods for users of other music stores, or denying access to stores like Amazon or Walmart for running music stores.
Neither has happened.
Re:As long as (Score:3, Insightful)
They're a BUSINESS, not the saviors of the planet.
They have a duty to their stockholders to maximize their profits.
If anybody starts a revolution with the music industry, it certainly won't be apple. More than likely it will something like last.fm, imeem.com or the pandora project.
Re:DRM'd? Check Techdirt (Score:3, Insightful)
I can.
To beat piracy, you must provide better service, not worse. As long as there are Flac torrents out there, I will never buy DRM'd AACs. But when I do find a band I like selling Flac downloads, I buy them.
Understand, DVDs almost do not count anymore, as CSS has been braken everywhere for years, and every new scheme is more desperate and futile than the last -- yet NetFlix still makes money. If Apple provided this service without the DRM, they would still make money, so long as there was new and interesting music.
Well, as the other article shows, Steve Jobs habitually lies about this kind of thing. Probably half of Apple, never mind the rest of the world, assumed that Apple was going to stay the course with PowerPC, right up until the Intel macs were released. Steve had to know about this, yet he let the Apple.com site continue to spew BS about the G5's "intel-crushing performance"... Again, right up to (and maybe a bit past) the point at which they went Intel.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As long as (Score:2, Insightful)
Well imamac, can I call you imamac? You see it really isn't a question of whether or not you want your own music, or even whether or not your music will expire.
If you look at our map here what you see is a representation of the United States in various colors. Each of these colors is an area in which, during certain times of the playing period, your music will be available for you to listen to, while in other areas you may have to pay a very slight associate fee to access your tunes.
The first thing we need to do is to identify your home area. Your home area is that are in which you will spend the majority of your time and the area in which your music will always* be available to you. Should you leave your home area, then you are in a 'roaming' area. Music may or may not be available to you while in the 'roaming' area depending upon our agreements with the primary music provider for that area..........
*Please note that always, as used in this explanation of our Terms of Service (TOS) denotes those standard hours during day, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (subject to change) during which standard play rates which may or may not be covered in your plan are included.