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Apple Mulls Flat-Rate "Unlimited Music" Option
Mike writes "Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about an 'all you can eat' model for buying music that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices. Finally, it looks like the industry (or at least Apple) is 'getting it'. The real question is not whether the big music companies will go for it, but rather, who will be the first one to get smart and agree to offer it?"
my purchase does not "expire". I want to own my music. And if it doesn't expire and I can get unlimited songs, just how expensive would this premium be? I expect it would be significant.
The real question is not whether the big music companies will go for it, but rather, who will be the first to one get smart and agree to offer it?
I disagree. Big companies still supply the music. The ITunes store would go out of business overnight of all of the labels pulled their songs from it. There are still some indie bands out there, but in terms of sheer scale, the big companies still hold many of the cards. Granted, it would be foolish of them to cut up a revenue stream, but the big companies still have the product to sell, and their input should not be dismissed.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I will NEVER give any one company the power to switch off my entire music or movie collection with the push of a button, or because of a computer error, or because their company went bankrupt or got sold.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You can use that term when they have DRM free content.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"Finally, it looks like the industry (or at least Apple) is 'getting it'"
Apple has the most successful internet music distribution system available. From the millions of iPods sold to the billions of songs sold on iTunes. And needless to say, everyone else who has tried the "all you can eat" music pricing model has failed.
So please inform me exactly what Apple is finally getting! Thanks. I won't be holding my breath.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
that got dropped out of the summary, "may". Its still rumor at this point, maybe you shouldn't be trying to pass it off as fact.
Monstar L
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Since the average iPod owner buys about 20 tracks from the iTunes, Apple wants to make the premium about $20, arguing that it should cover the average consumer's downloads.
:)
I think this is a bit naive (and I don't think it's Steve Jobs): people tend to eat more at a smorgasbord than if they have to pay for each entree, and this effect would be even greater when they have room for thousands of entrees in their digital stomachs.
Actually, it is neither.
You are neither getting a product free of charge (gratis), or having unlimited access with the ability to use the music freely forever, like you would expect when purchasing a DRM-free mp3 or CD (libre).
Yeah, Napster offers this service already. For £10/month you get unlimited access to their song library - so long as you don't mind the Windows Media DRM and total lack of support for non-Windows platforms. So Apple shouldn't have too much difficulty in their negotiations, since Napster has already paved the way. It'll be the same service, plus support for Macs and iPods. This is hardly a revolutionary new idea.
With this kind of service, DRM is a big turnoff. But I am not sure how this service could possibly be offered without DRM. The need for a special client program is also a turnoff: why not just provide the catalogue on a website and rely on the media player for DRM authentication?
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
About not being a cheap-ass, scum sucking mofo who'd steal a grade schoolers lunch if given the opportunity.
Entitled to something!? Are you kidding me? Entitled to a middle finger up their ass maybe. Certainly not entitled to stealing the profits of another company's successful product.
I'm not sure it's Apple that's thinking about this but rather the Music companies trying to push this on Apple. What they'd really want is a monthly fee from you every month of every year for the rest of your life. Oh and if you decide to stop paying, well then you're shit out of luck. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with paying for the music I want once and keeping it forever.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
it's free 'as in freedom', not 'as in beer'
Are you on crack? DRMd music is not free as in freedom.
This scheme is nothing more than a pay-up-front subscription service - one copied from Nokia at that.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
The music labels already don't care very much for Apple and its iPod + iTunes monopoly. They are losing control of paid distribution (never mind P2P) to their new gatekeeper and key master, Steve Jobs. The following quote is excerpted from an article posted earlier today, How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong
But not everyone sees Apple's all-or-nothing approach in such benign terms. The music and film industries, in particular, worry that Jobs has become a gatekeeper for all digital content. Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music, has accused iTunes of leaving labels powerless to negotiate with it. (Ironically, it was the labels themselves that insisted on the DRM that confines iTunes purchases to the iPod, and that they now protest.) "Apple has destroyed the music business," NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker told an audience at Syracuse University. "If we don't take control on the video side, [they'll] do the same." At a media business conference held during the early days of the Hollywood writers' strike, Michael Eisner argued that Apple was the union's real enemy: "[The studios] make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners. They make all these kinds of things, and who's making money? Apple!"
The labels have already locked themselves into Steve's golden iHandcuffs with DRM on the iPod + iTunes platform with fixed price songs so they will be very careful before they give over even more power to Apple to run their business, or what is left of it anyway. I do not see them agreeing to a monthly subscription for the entire iTunes catalogs, such a move would signal complete and utter desperation on the part of the music labels.
Rhapsody is an all-you-can-eat music service. I have Rhapsody and I love it.
Rhapsody costs $12-$15 a month (depending on your options), and you can listen to the music as long as you keep paying the monthly fee. If Apple can actually talk the big labels into granting unlimited lifetime downloads of music, that you can keep, for $20... I'll be stunned. That's a huge value there. Even at $80 that's a huge value.
I could see the labels going for a $20-per-iPod tax, maybe. I can't see them going for a special model that costs $20 extra. You just know that anyone who buys the $20 extra model is going to actually use the service. Maybe the statistics show that currently the average customer buys $20 worth of songs, but this all-you-can-eat plan slices away any future chance of that dollar amount going up. We're talking about an industry that is pricing CDs at $20... can Apple really get them to do this?
P.S. If you have never tried an all-you-can-eat music service, I suggest you try the two-week free trial for Rhapsody. You will probably see the appeal. It's easy and fun to find new music. Sometimes I don't make up my mind whether I like something until I play it all the way through a few times; it's nice to be able to do that.
http://learn.rhapsody.com/
Disclaimer: I don't work for Rhapsody but I do work for the company that owns it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The problem is that once you make it unlimited, a small but not insignificant percentage of users will immediately attempt to download the entire iTunes library. Hey, disk space is cheap, why not try, if there's no additional charge per track?
The only way this might work is if Apple doesn't have to pay even 1 cent to the record companies per download for people who download tracks under the unlimited plan. At least that way their only cost bandwidth.
I read Usenet for the articles.
Does anyone else remember when eMusic offered a flat-rate all-you-can-eat service? I found myself listening to a huge variety of music I'd ordinarily avoid, like jazz and blues. It's a very nice way to sample a lot of music and honestly a 30 second clip *is not* a reliable way to review unfamiliar music (or genres).
Quack, quack.
I can.
To beat piracy, you must provide better service, not worse. As long as there are Flac torrents out there, I will never buy DRM'd AACs. But when I do find a band I like selling Flac downloads, I buy them.
Understand, DVDs almost do not count anymore, as CSS has been braken everywhere for years, and every new scheme is more desperate and futile than the last -- yet NetFlix still makes money. If Apple provided this service without the DRM, they would still make money, so long as there was new and interesting music.
Well, as the other article shows, Steve Jobs habitually lies about this kind of thing. Probably half of Apple, never mind the rest of the world, assumed that Apple was going to stay the course with PowerPC, right up until the Intel macs were released. Steve had to know about this, yet he let the Apple.com site continue to spew BS about the G5's "intel-crushing performance"... Again, right up to (and maybe a bit past) the point at which they went Intel.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Even though, like the parent, I'm a CD buyer and have never paid for a single downloaded, I was understanding your argument until you reached this point.
People have always shared music. No, I don't consider that it's acceptable that "sharing" on the scale of Bittorrent or Usenet happens and I have over 1200 original CDs in my collection that proves I'm more than happy to pay a fair price for a good piece of music.
However, by purchasing a CD, I reserve the (very important to me) right to play it to a group of friends or lend it to them if they want to hear it in the comfort of their own homes. The music industry might even benefit from another CD sale or two.
I also reserve the right to format change that music in whatever way I please - what I do with that CD for myself is none of the music industry's / RIAA's / BPI's business and they know it; that's why nobody's ever been taken to court for ripping their own CDs.
DRM stops those rights I've reserved - I can't (practically) lend it to someone else to listen to and I can't format change it either. Plus I no longer own anything, I just "rent" it.
If there was a protection system for music such that you could do anything with it apart from upload it to the Internet, it wouldn't bother me. I might even support it on the basis that if I take the trouble to buy every CD, why should a whole load of other people get it for free?
Unfortunately, DRM does that but also affects me. Some of the reasons I buy music for are taken away with DRM. So not only do I have to accept that even though I don't copy music for other people, I am treated like someone who does, but also some of the reasons I buy music for in the first place are taken away from me. Plus, with DRM, if someone somewhere deems that I've listened to the music for long enough or enough times, they can use DRM to just stop me listening to it until I pay more money. (I believe the Mafia used to have a similar policy with small businesses and protection money and they were criminalised as a result.)
So please stop being so naive - if you pay for music, DRM is bad. It may be being touted as a weapon against piracy but, as usual, it's real use is to target the honest saps like you and me that already pay for our music and squeeze a bit more money out of us - that's it's prime goal.
Don't support DRM and don't buy DRM-ed products because ultimately all you are doing is making music a whole lot more expensive and restrictive for you.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.