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New RIM Streaming Music: $5 For 50 Songs?
jfruhlinger writes with news that Research In Motion will soon jump into the music service market. The service will be available through BlackBerry Messenger, and will offer users 50 songs for $5/month, which they can then share with other people who own BlackBerries.
"So why would anyone pay $5 a month to get 50 songs on their phone, when they can pay $10 a month and get an unlimited number of songs, that work on lots of different devices, from services like Rdio and Rhapsody? Reasonable question! But RIM seems to be assuming that its subscribers won’t ask. Instead it is playing up the notion that BBM Music will be about 'personalizing' your phone, in the same way that ringtones supposedly did a decade ago. Ringtones, as you’ll recall, let buyers play a few seconds of a song, and sold for a couple bucks, while full songs from Apple’s iTunes went for 99 cents. And for a few years, the music companies and the wireless carriers sold lots and lots of ringtones."
Or you can wait a few months and buy 50 shares of RIM for $5. How much does a deathknell ringtone cost?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
"What about this."
"We're RIM. You want this."
"No. Seriously. What about this?
"We're RIM. You want this."
Newsflash RIM. You've been resting on the fact that you were a big dog in the early professional mobile market. That's not going to save you. It's the only reason you haven't bailed from the market already. It's not going to slow your plummet anymore.
So get back to work and FOR FUCK'S SAKE...INNOVATE. Otherwise, take your place along other relics such as Microsoft Bob. The Lisa. The Osborne 2. Get the picture?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
99 cents for a song isn't extortion. At worst, it's a price somewhat higher than you'd like it to be. The fact that you have the ability to take something without paying doesn't mean that someone is extorting you by asking that you give them a dollar as a reward for their hard work.
Except that Steve Jobs publicly said that Apple would use non-DRM'ed music in February 6, 2007 and Apple offered EMI tracks in non-DRM'ed format starting May 29, 2007. Amazon didn't launch the public beta of their store until September 25, 2007 and it went live January 2008. I can't see how at least several months before Amazon == after.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That isn't Apple's model. That is the normal way of buying music that Apple only adopted after facing pressure from the community and competition from Amazon and others.
Spin history any way you want. The truth is, Jobs penned his famous "Open Letter" a full year before Amazon opened Amazon MP3. It just took Jobs a little longer to work out the details and hammer out the details, since they had a lot more deals with a lot more labels, already in place.
Someone wrote, performed, and recorded a song. If you would like to be able to listen to their work whenever you want, pay $0.99 for it (which is 1/2 of the cost of a fricking cup of coffee these days, and that will last you about an hour until you pee it out).
Did they force you to download it and now demand money or they will break your fingers? No? Then it's not extortion.
I don't get why people complain about this stuff so much. It's a completely elective entertainment expense, you decide if it's worth it and either buy it or don't...