Would adding a subscription option to iTunes be smething you would like?

ComputerGeek

My wife loves top 40 and uses my iPod for exercise... I think it would be great if Apple came out with an all you could eat subscription service as part of iTunes that would let her just get the music she hears on the radio for the month or two she likes it and fill up the iPod so she could take it to the gym.


what do you all think?

Im on a Mac, so getting her a WMA 10 compliant player would not help....besides, I like iTunes.

Anttech

Dont use it.. never will

dduardo

Does she mind losing all rights to listen to the songs after she stops paying for the subscription? That's what it really comes down to.

Anttech

How can u lose rights to listen to something? Maybe owning but not listening, is that what u mean?

edit: for example you download "the the" soul minning, and dont keep your subscription, then the next day you listen to it on the radio, you dont have rights to listen to something. You have rights to own it and play it.... this is what I was getting at..

dduardo

Once you stop paying, the music you've downloaded on your computer is deactivated and you can't listen to it anymore.

Anttech

I see.. it was the way you worded it

dduardo

I'm glad I could clarify it for you.

It should also be noted that if you stop paying and sync your player the key will be be invalidated. I'm sure in the future the music players will just stop playing automatically if you don't sync your player to get a new key every so often.

ComputerGeek

How is any of what you all said different than sat radio?

I see subscription service as being a good thing for people who like new music but get board with it quickly (like a few months) or folks who want to listen to new stuff but are unsure of what is a good group.....

a subscription would open you up to a lot more choices to experiment. I certainly would purchase music I liked a lot, but having the ability to find new music would increase my chance of buying more music.

Anttech

Im not going to pay a subscription for my collection! It doesnt make sence to me... Plus my collection is VAST

ComputerGeek

but what about like I said some one who if they did buy their music, never listened to it after a few months?

or what about finding new music and experimentation?


sure, I agree, I would not base my collection of music that I will always listen to on my subscription music, I would certainly purchase the songs I like from my subscription (basically anything I listen to for more than a few months) and I do have certain automatic bands I buy ASAP like SOAD, and Tool(when ever they feel like releasing an album)

but if you like commercial free Sat radio, how is having the CHOICE of a subscription (the purchase feature would still be there) be any different?

dduardo

There are two main differences

1) The long run. Software changes and companies go out of business. I find music and I want to hold onto it. Perhaps 5 years down the road I want to revisit it because I liked the sound, the memories it brings back, etc. What happens if the company closes their music store. Then what? Do I have to go back and download the songs again? Let's say I stop subscribing and later find out there is software incompatibility with the newer service.

2) Choice. Let's say Sirius slashes their subscription fee by 50% I can feel free to change sat radio providers no problem. Now try and do that with a subscription download service. Let's say apple increases their prices 50%. I can't move the music i've already downloaded over to another service. I got to redownload everything. Let's say I got 20Gigs of music on my ipod. That's a big deal.

Moonbear

I think what he's saying is that would be sort of in lieu of sat radio, where you can pick the songs and play them in any order you want on an iPod (such as playing your favorite workout music when you go to the gym), but you don't really own the songs, just sort of rent them for your subscription fee. It wouldn't be a service for people who like to build a music collection, but more for those who always want to be listening to something new or different, but don't want to buy all those songs outright.

Actually, I doubt that any company would agree to such a service unless they had the technology already built in to restrict burning CDs or having automatic expiration dates on the music. I also don't think it could be unlimited. There would have to be some limit on the number of songs you could have in use at a time, or else they wouldn't make much money if people were downloading so much for a smaller fixed fee than they would get if they had to buy those songs.

I would think the market would be pretty limited. For those who don't want to own music, satellite radio should satisfy them, and most other people actually want music they can keep once they pay for it.

The_Professional

you just described napster. that's how their subscription service works; plug your music player every month so they can verify if you're still a subscriber. not a big fan of that since you don't own the songs you're paying for. one can always go around it by using a program that will record the songs in your desktop and saving it as mp3.

ComputerGeek

Yahoo and Napster both have unlimited services that use WMA 10 audio DRM which allows for just such activity.