tdewey said:
I like the current model. But I agree the 30-sec preview is so short as to be annoying.
Yes, that was my main point and the reason I would like to see a subscription service on iTunes. In that sense, a subscription service is more like a preview for as long as you like until you decide to buy or not. And, as I said before it also opens up the possibility of "discovery" since you can listen to a lot of music before you even consider an individual purchase.
The current 30-second previews can be almost useless. Some of the previews contain a long introduction so that you never hear the actual melody and/or lyrics. That's fine if you already know what you want to buy (but in that case why do you even need the preview?), but it often prevents you from knowing what the song is really like if you've never heard it before (like the "B" side of a hit song, or the CD contents that never get any radio play).
However, I think the real issue here is whether the music industry is going to tolerate the massive opportunity for illegal sharing and copying that subscription-based PC systems allow. If anyone ever breaks the DRM on the subscription-based content then there is going to be a huge backlash from the music companies. Can you imagine if someone found a way to unlock the DRM with one click of the mouse (using a true DRM-breaking utility, not with the analog or real-time methods that already exist). In only a few minutes someone could potentially unlock their entire subscription collection that might consist of literally thousands and thousands of songs. And such a "crack" would only have to happen once (for anyone willing to use it), since the DRM'd content would already be on each user's PC.
For the above reason, I think subscription-based services will eventually be limited to running on dedicated devices (and not on the PC). What will happen is that the DRM content will only be allowed to exist on the non-PC playback device (the DRM will thus be locked into the embedded hardware). Thus in a situation like this your iPod-like device would actually connect directly to the subscription service and the music would never physically reside on your PC's hard disk. Then, the only way to get the music off of the playback device would be though the analog output (headphone/speaker out). In that sense, it would be almost like a programable radio (but be a completely "closed" system as far as digital duplication).
One could imagine a set-top box that offered both subscription-based audio and video. It would not be a "normal" PC and thus couldn't run software to "crack" and transfer the digital content. Then you could devise a custom hardware interface that would allow you to transfer the media to a portable playback device (which would once again be "closed" to a normal PC).
That's the future as I see it. Those most likely to bring such a system to consumers? I'd say Sony with the Playstation 3 or Microsoft with the XBox 2 or perhaps Apple with a new set-top media system (and the latter wouldn't actually be a Mac).
