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

Posted by Zonk on from the money-can-be-exchanged-for-good-and-services dept.

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."

1 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Typical arrogance from Steve Jobs by dustin_c1 · · Score: 1, Troll

    He has a habit of making wrong-headed and inflammatory statements like this.

    Recently he dismissed cell phone carriers as "commodities."

    Now he's dismissing subscription based music as something people don't want.

    Well, I want subscription music! It's great that people who want to pay $.99 a song get it DRM-free. But subscription based services will require DRM. I pay $15/mo and listen to anything I want with Napster. That's $180/yr or a meager 180 iTunes songs. I currently listen to Napster about 2 hours a day at work and I listen to it at home, in the gym and in the car. I discover new music on a near daily basis. I love that for the price of a CD, I get to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I would have paid probably $5,000 to iTunes to listen to the music I've listened to on Napster. Screw that!

    Subscription music services are rarely used for the same reason that nobody has a Mac. Everyone owns and iPod and subscription based software like Napster and Yahoo and Rhapsody won't work with the iPod. Why get Napster if it won't work with your music player? Similarly, everyone owns a PC and popular software won't work on a Mac. Why get a Mac if your favorite games won't work on it?

    As bad as a monopoly as Microsoft in the OS market has been, Apple controlling digital music will be 10 times worse. It's always been Jobs' way or the highway. It's one thing when it was just the cultists that had to deal with it. When it's the whole world, it won't be pretty.

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