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Apple Reportedly Working on iTunes Music Subscription Service
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+1
This is a half a step from a video sub, Satellite & Cable Companys should be worried (though cable not as much, they still control most of the big pipes going in to homes)
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If I can store it locally instead of over the Internet then I think it will be good
If I can store it locally instead of over the Internet then I think it will be good
Of course they will. Wouldn't make sense not to. This will be an additional service. If it doesn't suit then don't bother with it. Simple
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It sound good tho. But not for $15 a month. I like google. $25.00 at year sound great
It sound good tho. But not for $15 a month. I like google. $25.00 at year sound great
This sounds expensive! I pay $15 a month for unlimited access to movies and DVDs from netflix. Why would I pay an additional $15 or even $10 for limited access to music? And has anyone heard of Grooveshark? for just $3 a month I have unlimited access to almost all songs through my pc and ipod touch, as well as my phone! I simply don't like where the music industry is going in the future.
A different perspective
So basically you can own all of the 200,000+ iTunes music that you can access anytime, anywhere. Thats around 970GBs worth of storage.
The $10-15/month pays to host and deliver from the cloud, which is much cheaper than hosting 970GBs worth of music content on a server.
200,000 songs is about 16,666 albums(12 songs per album) . Let's say an album is about $9.99, nobody is going to pay for $160000 for all the albums in the iTunes store.
Let's say you are 20 years old and you started buy an album every month until you die. For 60 years you spent only $7200-10800, but that only gives you 720 albums or 8460 songs. But for the same amount via subscription you have all the iTunes music you ever want(or don't want).
I think this is the cheapest alternative, especially to those who listen to music a lot and buys more than one album per month.
However, this is not preferable to people who listens to 2-3 new songs per month. Better to stick with $0.99 cent route.
EDIT: Actually there are over 11 million songs in iTunes
11 million songs
= 55 Terabytes
= 916,666 albums
= $9,157,493 worth of albums
So basically you can own all of the 200,000+ iTunes music that you can access anytime, anywhere. Thats around 970GBs worth of storage.
The $10-15/month pays to host and deliver from the cloud, which is much cheaper than hosting 970GBs worth of music content on a server.
200,000 songs is about 16,666 albums(12 songs per album) . Let's say an album is about $9.99, nobody is going to pay for $160000 for all the albums in the iTunes store.
Let's say you are 20 years old and you started buy an album every month until you die. For 60 years you spent only $7200-10800, but that only gives you 720 albums or 8460 songs. But for the same amount via subscription you have all the iTunes music you ever want(or don't want).
I think this is the cheapest alternative, especially to those who listen to music a lot and buys more than one album per month.
However, this is not preferable to people who listens to 2-3 new songs per month. Better to stick with $0.99 cent route.
EDIT: Actually there are over 11 million songs in iTunes
11 million songs
= 55 Terabytes
= 916,666 albums
= $9,157,493 worth of albums
For people with very little money to spend, and the desire to listen to lots of music, I can see this being great for them.
For people who wish own/use/manipulate the music in ways beyond "listening courtesy of iOS", this model will not work.
As a DJ, I purchase nearly $100 a month in 256kbps music, just from iTunes alone.
I was hoping that increased bandwidth would eventually result in lossless audio being made available for purchase. Looks like Apple Consumer, Inc. is moving to a model that only works for the lowly masses.
Sucks for me.
For people who wish own/use/manipulate the music in ways beyond "listening courtesy of iOS", this model will not work.
As a DJ, I purchase nearly $100 a month in 256kbps music, just from iTunes alone.
I was hoping that increased bandwidth would eventually result in lossless audio being made available for purchase. Looks like Apple Consumer, Inc. is moving to a model that only works for the lowly masses.
Sucks for me.
Yep. And in this time and age, renting movies follows on rank #2. And while we're at it, somebody should tell the industry that there is no justification for prices above 5 USD/EUR for a downloadable movie (NOT a rental!).
And, of course, NO DRM!
I disagree with this. I don't want to rent music. I do want to rent movies. If it's a movie I'll watch again, I'll buy it. But that would be VERY rare.
But why should my choices matter? Let those who want to rent, rent. Let those who want to own, buy.
If you think the price is too high, find your entertainment content elsewhere. The market will sort it out.
I'm a little concerned by that statement. So, Apple is moving to a music renting format??? I prefer to own a song so I can listen to it days, weeks, months, years down the road without having to worry about some "expiration" date...
And there's the little problem that you need to be connected to Internet to be able to listen to the music. No Internet connection, no music for you. I don't like that.
No, it would be streaming, with possible options to buy x number of songs/month. That's the way the streaming services usually work. For songs you stream, you would only "have" them as long as you have the service. The advantage is access to a huge catalog at any time. You'd have wall to wall music 24/7, and your choice of the entire catalog of 11,000,000 or whatever it is now.
If Apple really is sparring with Spotify, maybe this will really happen.
Or maybe the record companies will decide they don't want to deal with either company and we'll keep the purchase based model we have now.
What happens when...
What happens when someone writes a stream ripper program that also makes the rental selections and fills in the ID3 tags automatically? For the price of buying a few albums, a months rental of music will be turned into twenty or more gigabytes of owned music. Illegal perhaps, or maybe just a violation of a license agreement. Either way, there is nothing stopping the less scrupulous.
What happens when someone writes a stream ripper program that also makes the rental selections and fills in the ID3 tags automatically? For the price of buying a few albums, a months rental of music will be turned into twenty or more gigabytes of owned music. Illegal perhaps, or maybe just a violation of a license agreement. Either way, there is nothing stopping the less scrupulous.
I subscribe to Rhapsody for $10 a month and I love it. I use it with earbuds in my car and on my home stereo.
You live in a forest?
Sorry to be blunt but where I live, internet is everywhere. For the past 5 years there wasn't anytime I didn't had wireless internet access. (In the bus, streets, friends house, on a plane, etc). In the near future, internet access will be so readily accessible like tap water. Heck even in remote places of Africa there are wireless internet access since its cheaper to build the infrastructure than to dig and install kilometres of landlines.
Both Spotify and Rdio allow you to download playlists for offline listening.
On topic... I love how the anti-subscription people like to try to enforce their ideas of how to listen to music on everyone else.
I'd like to ask one question to the anti-subscription peeps... why is Apple so afraid of Spotify then?
w00master
Why wouldn't you pay additional money to get access to music? Nothing is free. It's perfectly reasonable to pay $15 to get access to all the music you want IMO.
Grooveshark..ah, yes. Problem: Most (like 70% or so) of their content isn't licensed by them so it's illegal, even though they use a loophole to put the legal responsibilities on the users. Grooveshark is pretty much like, say, The Pirate Bay and bit torrent technology. It can be used legally, but the large majority of the content is not. It needs to be shut down quickly.
I never object to having another option, but I’d only use this for short times for trial-and-discovery purposes. After which, the music I like enough to call up by specific song/album in future, I’d want to buy to my library anyway.
A subscription would be useful to me for streaming random suggestions or songs within a certain style... and Pandora already does that really well--for me!
But for some, I’m sure it’s a good option to have in the mix.
(As for Netflix, iTunes already does compete with them a little, but Netflix has an untouchable selection. Which is why I consider Netflix one of the best features of AppleTV.)
A subscription would be useful to me for streaming random suggestions or songs within a certain style... and Pandora already does that really well--for me!
But for some, I’m sure it’s a good option to have in the mix.
(As for Netflix, iTunes already does compete with them a little, but Netflix has an untouchable selection. Which is why I consider Netflix one of the best features of AppleTV.)
hdtracks.com is cd-quality. Unfortunately, their catalog is small, but you can find some nice music.