If your subscription lapses, not only do you have to spend time downloading the songs again, you don't even have access to them without purchasing them from another source. You can't legally make DRM-free copies to keep if you cancel your subscription. So, if you have 200 songs that you "must have", you will have to either continue your subscription or buy them somewhere else. I don't know about you, but I prefer to keep a copy of the songs I like, I don't change my musical taste every month. And I don't buy 180 songs a year (that would be 1 new song every 2 days).
Go back and read the paragraph you just wrote. You make no sense. You're mixing and matching SUBSCRIPTION downloads with PURCHASE downloads. Do you really think that if I had downloaded 5000 songs with a SUBSCRIPTION service, that when I cancelled that service I would be compelled to BUY those 5000 songs for $5000???? OF COURSE NOT.
What I would do, and in fact what I *have* done (more than once), is get another SUBSCRIPTION, and over time download those 5000 songs in that other SUBSCRIPTION service, again only paying $15/month. Notice that *buying* never came up in any of my explanations of the subscription service. I'm not interested in buying. Buying isn't even part of the equation. Go back and read my previous posts - I though they were very, very clear why switching subscription providers isn't that big a deal. I thought I described my experience in some detail.
An in terms of buying 180 songs a year on iTunes, ask yourself this: do you acquire 180 songs a year by any other means? How many songs do you download? How many CD's do you buy a year? Are you seriously telling me that your music collection doesn't grow by 180 songs a year by some means or another? Well, I think you'd be in the minority there, at least for people within a certain age range, and certainly compared to most people on this forum.
The point is, subscription services should be compared to the iTunes song-purchase model, *not* to free downloads. I mean yeah downloading music you get unlimited songs for *free*, at the cost of slow/unreliable downloads, incorrect/incomplete tag information, etc. When you compare LEGAL music options: subscription vs. a-la-carte song purchases, I think subscription wins HANDS DOWN.
