Jobs Says People Don't Want to 'Rent' Music

eldavojohn writes "PhysOrg is running a piece on a recent speech by Apple CEO Steve Jobs about DRM free music. While we know that Jobs is a self proclaimed proponent of DRM free music who's not all talk, he's now said that 'by the end of this year, over half of the songs we offer on iTunes we believe will be in DRM-free versions. I think we're going to achieve that.' Jobs pointed out what's obvious to us, the consumers, but isn't obvious to the music industry — 'People want to own their music.' He also dismissed subscription based music as a failure, and claimed a lot of other music labels are intrigued by the EMI deal."

Comments

He's Right

[neoform]

It's the same with software, do you want to have to pay $29.95/month to use windows? (I'm sure MS would love that, but I can't think of a single person who would)

I'm glad someone gets it.

[Marrshu]

People feel happy when they own their music. Hence why there are so many who won't buy DRMed music. You not only feel like a criminal, but you feel you don't own what you just spent your hard-earned money on.

Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us

[HuguesT]

Yes, now we are haggling over the terms of the license. Will anyone deny that DRM-free music is more consumer friendly ?

Renting in general

[RichPowers]

Given the choice, how many people would rent a home instead of buying it? Would you rather rent a TV from RaC or own it?

In many cases, people must resort to renting because they can't afford to buy. This is hardly the case when it comes to music.

Like Jobs says, consumers want to own shit and do what they want with it. 'Renting' and 'subscription' are associated with control, red tape, limitations, etc. Buying a DRM-free song or album is a single transaction with no strings attached.

Re:Renting in general

[Keeper]

Consumers want what gives them the best deal.

In most cases, buying a house is a better deal than renting a house. Hell, my mortgage payment is $300 less than renting the equivelent home (and that's before accounting for taxes). Buying is a no-brainer.

Music isn't as clear cut ... if you download less than 120 songs per year (or less than 12 albums), buying your music is a better deal than renting. If you download more than 100 songs per year or download more than 10 albums, renting is generally a better deal IF you believe that (as a general rule) you will want to continue download at that level or higher for the foreseable future.

Re:Renting in general

[DDLKermit007]

So what your saying is that people will always want to buy new music? If only that were so with music. What happens when you go from listening to less than $120 a year equivalent in new music to less than $10? Do you cancel your subscription, and lose everything? No, your forced to keep paying whatever they want for the honor of keeping access plus inflation.

Re:Renting in general

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"If you download more than 100 songs per year or download more than 10 albums, renting is generally a better deal IF you believe that (as a general rule) you will want to continue download at that level or higher for the foreseable future."

You're right, but it's more complicated than that. I've been a Rhapsody subscriber since... oh... 2003. I went that route for a few reasons. 1.) I can always go find new music. If a friend says 'this song is good', I'm listening to it 20 seconds later. 2.) I'm near an internet-connected computer most of my waking life. I also work across 3 different machines. Work, home, laptop. Because I use a subscription service, I don't have to have gigs of backups or situations where I have some music on one computer and different music on another. I used to do that, and man it's a headache. Hard drive failures, for example, used to be rather stressful. 3.) I go through music. I have a few songs on my playlist that I had back in 03, but not many. I keep finding new stuff and listening to it. 4.) $10 a month is a lot less than I used to spend on music. 5.) I can still buy the music if I like. I've never done that, but even if I did, there's always iTunes. 6.) I rarely like a song the first time I hear it. I certainly don't find much use in hearing a 30 second clip. The subscription service allows me to plop a few songs in and see how I like them over time. I may not represent the majority, here, but I've found a number of songs that I had to 'get into'. Subscription makes perfect sense to me. I seriously doubt I'm in some minor niche, considering all the CableTV subscribers out there.

Frankly, I think Jobs is both right and wrong. I don't think many people care about subscription music. I also think that's because they haven't been exposed to it. If what I've seen from Slashdot postings is any indication, I don't think most people even get it. "But I don't own it!" Okay, fine, think of it is access to a huge database of music. Find what you want, go buy the copies you really want to keep. Paying a few bucks a month to listen to this music may turn some people off, but I don't think blindly buying music makes much more economic sense. Unless you've heard the song you're buying, you're basically just opening your mouth and closing your eyes. At least with a subscription model like Rhapsody's, you're getting the whole song along with access to thousands of others.

To each is own, but I completely agree with your comment about consumers wanting what gives them the best deal. The only thing I'd add to that is consumers need convincing. I don't think Jobs has tried the subscription service. I think that if he did, Apple could brainstorm a really interesting way to work that out. In other words, Apple could make it work, if they could just see past their own rationalizations. Heck, it was that sort of thinking that got iTunes off the ground despite the *AA's misgivings about it.

If you ask me, Jobs is being really short-sighted. Unfortunately we'll never know until Apple actually tries.

Well, duh

[saikou]

People don't want to pay for music either :) Unless they really-really have to, or love the artist

One can only hope

[dahdahdah]

... that Apple's clout is sufficient to a) hold the price line on the renegotiaed contracts with the other 3 and b)that those 3 will jump on the non-DRM bandwagon. BUT - i fear they may pull their contracts to greedily make more money elsewhere, and to try to spur lagging CD sales.. Although, even if they did that, seems to me Job's prediction of 50% non-DRM music on iTunes is all but guaranteed.

I don't mind renting some music

[Rude Turnip]

I was heavily into iTunes until I tried out the Urge service that's bundled with WMP11. $10 a month is dirt cheap and I can "try before I buy" tonnes of entire albums. If I want to buy an album, I can do it online. The tracks would already be on my hard drive (if I chose to download instead of stream) and a bit is flipped to state that I've purchased the songs and can now burn them (and re-rip to MP3). Most likely, if I like an entire album, I'll buy the CD used at the local music store.

The radio stations are pretty good; they basically showcase the songs on the service and if I hear a song I like, I can click on the station's "now playing" list and get more info on the song/artist and then download it.

So, I'm getting all the benefits of iTunes Music Store, plus exposure to a whole lot of music I'd otherwise never have incentive to hear.

Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us

[JWW]

What??? So lets see. The new EMI songs will be DRM-free AAC. I'll be able to copy them to all of my PCs and play them, with no problem. I'll be able to burn them to CD, in CD format and as a backup and as long as I have a player for the AAC file, I can play _my_ song.

Unlike protected tunes, there is no way Apple can take away any of my "rights" for this music after I've bought it from them.

From my perspective, that sure as hell makes it look like I will own the DRM-free music I will purchase from iTunes.

Re:Just a note: Jobs' RDF

[justinlindh]

Absolutely. I've been a very happy subscriber of Real's Rhapsody for over 3 years now. It's subscription based, but I can also load my MP3 player full of unlimited music (as long as I connect it to the PC once a month to re-license the content). Rhapsody gets albums the same date that stores do, and it's instantly free. If I wanted to burn the track to a CD instead of use it on my MP3 player, I can then pay the small album/track fee and do with it whatever I like. Having access to that vast amount of music on a PC is invaluable, as I'm in front of this idiot box 8+ hours a day for work and I also love music.

Rhapsody made it possible for me to enjoy unlimited music legally, for the price of one CD per month via a subscription model. Maybe the companies that offer subscription models aren't seeing the gold mine that they imagined, but it would be pretty ignorant for Jobs to say that the model, in general, doesn't work.

That makes no sense

[encoderer]

You cannot compare renting a home to subscribing to a music service. It just makes no sense whatsoever.

The reasons for subscription music services revolve largely around variety and choice. For $20 a month I can access MILLIONS, MILLIONS of songs. On top of that, your music "collection" is always up to date, new music being added all the time.

This is like saying "Nobody would want to SUBSCRIBE to cable television. You don't want to RENT your shows, you want to OWN them, JUST LIKE A HOUSE" ...what? that makes no sense? well, either does your post.

Let's not forget that Jobs has a vested interest here. He's not just speaking as a concerned observer. It just so happens that a subscription model is not terribly compatible with the iPod in its current incarnation.

For $20 a month, I can buy, what, 240 songs a year? Why is is a better deal to pay $240 for 240 songs when I can pay $240 for millions of songs, available to me via any internet connection, and easily sharable with trusted friends or family? If I cancel my subscription I don't have any songs. Who cares? For $20 more I can have access for another month to millions of songs again.

This isn't exactly a new model. If people were so concerned about "owning" content they wouldn't be going to libraries, they wouldn't be subscribing to Satellite Radio, and they wouldn't be subscribing to Cable TV.

Re:That makes no sense

[geekoid]

" If I cancel my subscription I don't have any songs. Who cares?"

I do. I have music that is 30+ years old. I don't want to be paying 20 dollars a month to listen to a few songs.

Besides that fact that you can't listen to a million songs, so having access to a million songs is really an illogical point.
How many unique songs will you listen to a year? That's the number you need to be using.

If you rent 1 song, you have to pay 20 a month just to hear the 1 song.

Re:It *is* obvious to the music industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so, at least not at the two of the "big four" labels where I was privileged (ha!) to work directly with top-level executives for the most horrible few years, for me, of the '90s. The men and women who run these companies aren't total idiots—you don't get to run companies if you're truly egregiously stupid, especially not in media—but many of them are pretty fucking risk-averse, even to the point of preferring the status quo to bold moves with unpredictable consequences, whether or not they could thereby benefit themselves. Add to this the sincere conviction that technical means would be able to stem piracy—they're not totally stupid, remember, after all technical measures (if not DRM) worked pretty well for them for almost a century.

In the end, as with so many aspects of life, you can't use logic to fight conviction and fear of change.

Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us

[Paradise Pete]

Unlike protected tunes, there is no way Apple can take away any of my "rights" for this music after I've bought it from them

Just because the license would be difficult to enforce doesn't mean you have a right to do what you want.

As an extreme example, If they wanted to, Apple and the record companies could introduce a subscription model without DRM, and as a subscriber you agree that if you stop paying that you will delete all the songs. Obviously it would be difficult for them to force you to do it. But that alone wouldn't give you the right to keep them.

Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us

[tkelechogi]

Yes, but you do not own the right to resell the music. Thus, the legal definition is not that of ownership; you are, indeed, licensing it.

Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us

[maharvey]

Even when you "purchase" a song, you don't own it. "Renting" or not, you never really own anything other than a license.

Yes you do own it. You own an exact copy, and you can do anything with that copy you please... except copy it. The RIAA cannot come and confiscate your CD.

That's where copyRIGHT comes in. It is the right to make a copy, not the ability. It has nothing to do with ownership. You own it, but your rights are restricted. There are other restricted rights as well, such as the right to public performance or whatever. (For comparison, you may own a car, but you do not have the right to drive it on a public highway unless you are granted that right through a license. Regardless of whether you are granted that right, you still OWN the car.)

A license may grant you the right to copy the song you own, or the right to publicly perform the song you own.

So yes you DO actually own something.

(Software is weird and different and I'm not sure how this concept translates to shrinkwrap licenses and stuff.)

The ultimate hypocrite?

[SysPig]

Perhaps Mr. Jobs would like to expand his "you bought it, use it as you wish" philosophy to the OS he sells.

Re:Mr. Jobs, stop misleading us

[grolschie]

You should be able to on-sell the song (or more accurately, the license). Just like software, you sell the media, keys, etc, and remove it from your systems. What's the difference between this, and a person buying a song on someone else's behalf because that someone doesn't own a credit card?

Re:What we reallly want...

[OakLEE]

You know, I call bullshit on this argument. I bet that you and all the other people that make this argument (and there seems to be a lot) really just don't want to pay anything for music at all. You all just want to download the songs for free, and wouldn't pay a cent for a song even if it came in uncompressed 96 KHz PCM Audio straight from the master tape.

Now, if that's what you want (free, as in beer, music) come out and say it, and lets have a real debate over the underlying issue. But don't hide behind this BS "uncompressed music" argument. No commercially available completely uncompressed. Even most CD's are dynamically range compressed.