Katie MarsalThough the rumors have never come to pass, CNN through its Media Biz website on Wednesday raised new evidence in revisiting the prospect that Apple may soon announce a monthly subscription service for digital music downloads through iTunes.
"I think Apple is seriously considering a subscription offering right now even though they will probably tell you otherwise," he said.
While subscription services from iTunes rivals Napster, Real and Yahoo have done little garner interest, Ottolenghi argues that consumers aren't necessarily averse to paying monthly subscriptions. Instead, he claims music fans haven’t embraced the model because Apple doesn't offer it as an option.
Phil Leigh, a senior analyst with Inside Digital Media, seconded the notion. He claims the number one factor retarding the acceptance of the subscription model is the sheer dominance of the industry by Apple.
"Record labels would like a subscription service. They, like anyone else, like recurring revenue. Ringing the cash register every month is a beautiful way to run a business," the analyst told CNN. “But I don’t think they are going to do it because Jobs has said he’s against it and I believe that most of the time we should take people at face value unless we have compelling evidence not to."
Still, Ottolenghi is reportedly high in his convictions that Apple will eventually offer a monthly subscription model alongside its a-la-carte and album sales models, if only to increase iTunes usage amongst illegal file-sharing dwellers.
"With peer-to-peer, there are 2.5 billion downloads per month compared to Apple taking three years to sell 1 billion songs on iTunes," he said. "That’s a big difference."
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88 Comments
I'm not a fan boy or anything like that, but if they do this I think they are going to kill off the so called competition. I love movies, but I don't like buying dvd's, I just watch them once.
I don't think this has anything to do with the music side, I think quite possibly they will use subscription in the video side.
I would rather own my music than the movies.
I don't think this has anything to do with the music side, I think quite possibly they will use subscription in the video side.
I would rather own my music than the movies.
You're not alone in that regard by any means. I and many many many other people don't like to be tied to a subscription to listen to music. How many songs does one actually need, that and most of the songs people have are from CD's anyway. iTunes works cause people can pick and chose when they want to buy. Movies are a slightly different matter, but this could also be a subscritption service for TV Shows for an iTunes iPTV service.
Personally I rather own my movies too, although I have rented on occasion. In an ideal iTunes world this is what I would like:
1. Buy songs
2. Buy Movies
3. Rent Movie option
4. Subscription TV Shows service with some live news and sports content (not that I'm a big sport or news guy, I just think it couldn't replace cable or satellite otherwise).
Besides I'd rather support a company I like, and the service would probably be pretty good too.
Baloney. If iTunes were to start to see real competition, they'd change. Not now. Not in six months.
There's no way Apple can do this on the music side without altering the way Fairplay fundamentally works. Right now, iPod and Apple TV don't handle DRM at all—only iTunes does. A rental model would force Apple to move DRM functionality onto the iPod and Apple TV. Thus, I don't see it happening.
Not to mention that every attempt to do this in the history of digital music has been a complete flop. It makes no business sense.
Video is another story, but even that would introduce unneeded complexity that would confuse and frustrate users whenever it malfunctioned. Who wants files that are timebombs, ready to self-destruct from the moment you start watching them? This is the major flaw of pay-per-view and onDemand services. I often start a movie on one day, and then not get back to finish it until a few days later.
The only way to make it work would be to set it up like Netflix, where there was no timelimit on a file, but rather a maximum number of files you could "rent" at a time. "Turn in" one file, and you'd be granted access to another. All for a monthly fee. But again, you'd have to have some way for the iPod and Apple TV to be aware immediately whenever you turned in a file. Otherwise, it would continue to be available until you synched again.
There's no reason why Netflix and iTunes can't co-exist. When I want to buy a movie that I know I'll watch many times, I buy it on iTunes. When I want to rent a movie for a single viewing, I use Netflix. It's no different from what I've always done.
It's a slippery DRM slope, moving into the rental space. I think digital files are best left for purchase only.