You can already do this with Napster, Rhapsody, MusicNet and MusicNow. All of them offer unlimited streaming to your PC. No need to transfer to your digital player first.
This is practically Orwellian. How am I being "restricted" by a service that gives me access to practically all music ever recorded, whereever and whenever I want? Load up your 60GB portable player with a couple thousand albums? Why not, it's all you can eat! How is that "restrictive"? Compare that model to, say Netflix, which lets you have 3 DVDs at a time. Which service is more restrictive?
I've been eagerly anticipating this for a while. Think about this - $10 a month for access to approximately all music ever recorded, as much as you want, wherever you want. Download every new release as it comes out - why not, it's free!
The rent vs. buy stuff seems like BS to me. It's like saying that HBO is worthless because you don't get access forever. Or people won't be willing to watch movies in a theater, because they don't actually end up owning anything. How many of you who are scoffing at this idea are Netflix subscribers?
I'll bet that the majority of CDs are listed to for a short time, and then filed away. So why clutter up your life with CDs that you won't listen to? And of course buying and renting music are not mutually exclusive, just as you can (gasp) rent DVDs and also buy them. Subscribing to a rental service doesn't prohibit you from also buying anything you want to listen to long-term.
The IPO is not necessarily delayed. The CEO's statements that were taken to mean there was a delay were actually consistent with his previous statements. Google has never publicly stated that they would be doing an IPO.
Right, credit card fees are a huge drain on a la carte download stores, and a big advantage of sub services is one charge per month. Apple is doing all it can to provide alternate means of payment (bill through AOL, prepaid accounts, gift certificates, etc.), but overall I think there's still going to be a significant number of one-off 99 cent transactions. Remember, Apple themselves say they don't make money off of iTMS. Of course they also say the key is that it's a driver to iPod sales, but I'm not sure about that strategy in the long term, when other hardware manufacturers close the gap in quality with much cheaper products. But that remains to be seen.
By the way, the 250K sub number is already a couple of months old (end of September), and the Apple numbers you cite are up to the minute. Rhapsody has done a big push in the past couple of months - lots of ads and promotion through Best Buy. Even last quarter, without this big ad push they were adding almost 50K subs per month, so I would think they're closing in on 400K subs about now.
Apples and oranges - the labels give different terms for subscription services than they do to "a la carte" download services. The sub services pay a percentage of revene to the labels - I've read that this is about 50%, or $5 on a $10 subscription. The "a la carte" download services pay about 70% or $0.70 on a download.
Actually, despite the hype that iTunes has received, the subscription services have been doing quite well. Total subscribers are close to 700,000 and rising quickly. At an average of $10 per month, that's about $7 million in revenue per month, with much better profit margins that iTunes.
Source for the numbers:
Napster: 80,000 (read this recently, can't find the source at the moment)
I use Rhapsody and, for the way I listen to music, it blows away iTMS. It's $10 per month for unlimited on-demand streaming. Of course I have to be connected to use it, but I'm always online anyway so that's not a problem. For a flat fee, I can explore all kinds of new music & listen to old favorites as well.
I think you don't understand what subscription services offer - and you're not alone, I've seen this fallacy in a lot of discussion of subscription services. The subscription fee ($10 per month for Rhapsody) gets you unlimited on-demand streaming from a huge library. You can treat it as a streaming-only service, and not pay any more than the flat fee. With Rhapsody, you can also choose to buy permanent downloads for 79 cents.
If you don't care about on-demand streaming and only want to burn permanent copies, then you're better off with iTunes or BuyMusic. But for someone like me who is online constantly, and apparently for 600,000+ other people, $10 per month is a great value for what I'm getting.
the assumption being that on-demand streaming is worthless, therefore the monthly fee is really just a "cover charge" that you pay for permanent downloads.
Millions, probably tens of millions of people in the US sit in front of a computer for hours every day listening to music. Why is it so hard to believe that lots of these people would find it worth $10/month (30 cents per day) for access to essentially the world's largest CD collection?
Somewhat of a nitpick, but AAC is not a DRM scheme. AAC is the codec that Apple uses, and they wrap it with their own propietary DRM scheme (Fairplay). They could just as easily wrap MP3 or AIFF, and AAC could be wrapped using Intertrust or some other DRM scheme.
Because it's not radio! I get to choose what I want to listen to, when I want to listen to it, from an enormous collection of music (almost everything I'd want to listen to). It's like having tens of thousands of CD's.
So what happens when you want to hop in your car and take your Rhapsody music with you? Do you have internet access in your car??
Not yet. But why is it so hard to understand that lots of people find $10 per month worth of vaule in a service that lets you listen to music on demand for an enormous library while you're at your computer? Sure it would be more valuable if I could listen in my car, but it provides more than enough value as it is.
No one is stopping you from paying 10 dollars a month to listen to music you want to. That's fine, if you want to spend 120 a year to access content that you only subsribe to.. great. For me however I'd rather spend 120 dollars and OWN 120 tracks that I can listen to 40 yrs from now when I'm on some beach looking at bikini clad women.
Subscription models don't work for people who truly love music.
<sarcasm> Gee I didn't realize that subscribing to a music service somehow eliminated my ability to also buy music! Guess I'd better cancel that subscription! And I'd also better stop going to movies, since that must also preclude me from purchasing DVD's! </sarcasm>
Why is it so hard to understand that it's not a mutually exclusive choice? Well, maybe it is if you have exactly a $120 yearly budget for music, but that isn't the case for me.
And the bit about subscription services not working for music lovers is completely bogus. The fact is that subscription models work far better for music lovers than for people who may only buy a few top 40 CDs per year. For $10 per month I have access to approximately all the music in the world. It's fantastic! I can listen to all different genres, styles, artists - things I never would have been exposed to via the radio, and things that I never would have bought without hearing first. It's a music lover's dream!
Dude, before you try to correct somebody, you really should know what you're talking about. Real has over 1 million subscribers for all of its services. They have 250,000 for Rhapsody - the premium radio service is a Rhapsody option.
And there's no need to "trust your music" to the company, any more than you're "trusting your movies" by going to a theater chain that may not be doing well financially. If I get value out of the service while I'm using it, that's all that matters.
Boy, have you got me completely wrong. I'm about as far from trendy as you can get. I drive a 1996 Golf. I still use a landline. I have 1000+ CDs, including all of the Beatles albums, plenty of Miles Davis, etc. And Rhapsody is still a great deal.
First of all, your point about listening to 30 days doesn't make sense. I can keep listening to the same music forever, as long as I keep subscribing. And since there's so much music, both new and old, that I want to listen to, and new music being added all the time, I don't foresee cancelling.
Why is it so hard to see that subscribing to a service like this doesn't cut off your other options - you can still buy CD's, you can buy tracks for 79 cents and burn them, etc. It's incredibly presumptious of you to tell me that a subscription service is a "bad deal" for me, when you don't know me or my listening habits, and you don't seem to understand what a subscription service is.
Actually Rhapsody is not a "Trojan." It is a completely separate client which has nothing to do with the RealOne Player. It doesn't install any spyware or try any of the other obnoxious tricks that Real is known for. It was developed by listen.com before they were bought by Real. Real may screw it up yet, or try to merge it into the RealOne Player, in which case I'll almost certainly dump it.
Hey, guess what? I do treat music that way now! And so do 600,000+ other people, and growing! $10 per month for unlimited streaming access to a huge library of music is a fantastic deal for me. Would you want to limit my right to enjoy music in the way I want to, because it doesn't happen to be the way you want to?
I'm not a liar, and it's pretty clear that you don't understand basic grammar. Take a look at the quote:
"One question to ask these subscription services is how many subscribers they have."
have, not had. Have is present tense
"Altogether, it's around 50,000."
it's = it is, not it was. It's is present tense
Earlier Jobs does discuss his prediction that MusicNet and Rhapsody would fail, and then cites his bogus current numbers as proof that his prediction is incorrect. Either he's lying or he doesn't keep very close tabs on a business he supposedly dominates (which is hard to believe).
Subscriptions are just another option, they don't limit anything. Does subscribing to Netflix or HBO restrict your ability to buy DVD's?
By the way, Rhapsody does not use any DRM (not saying that couldn't change in the future). It's a streaming-only service, with a separate option to burn unprotected tracks directly to a CD. So what about it do you object to? Are you claiming that the existence of streaming is somehow extinguishing your rights?
No comparison - XM Radio is just radio! Rhapsody allows me to listen to music on demand. I can listen to the same song/album over and over again, whenever I want. It's like the difference between a radio station and a CD. By the way, Rhapsody has radio as well for when you don't feel like selecting music or want to be exposed to something new - with the advantage that if you like a song you can go back to on-demand and listen to more from the same artist.
You clearly don't understand the way Rhapsody works. With Rhapsody I'm not "renting a particular song over and over." The comparison is not "10 cents per listen of a song vs. 99 cents to own forever." Rhapsody's model is that for $10 per month I'm renting basically all the recorded music in the world (OK not all - but most that I care about) for a month. Since there's no additional cost to listening to a new song, I listen to lots and lots of new music that I otherwise would not have listened to, and lots of stuff I probably don't care enough about to spend 99 cents on, but that I enjoy listening to anyway.
What part of "250,000 paying subscribers" (right there in the headline) don't you understand? As far as churn, what part of "46% growth in the quarter" don't you understand?
These are not equivocal statements - these are hard numbers in an earnings report, not something any CFO who doesn't want to go to jail is going to mess with.
Slashdot Mirror
You can already do this with Napster, Rhapsody, MusicNet and MusicNow. All of them offer unlimited streaming to your PC. No need to transfer to your digital player first.
This is practically Orwellian. How am I being "restricted" by a service that gives me access to practically all music ever recorded, whereever and whenever I want? Load up your 60GB portable player with a couple thousand albums? Why not, it's all you can eat! How is that "restrictive"? Compare that model to, say Netflix, which lets you have 3 DVDs at a time. Which service is more restrictive?
I've been eagerly anticipating this for a while. Think about this - $10 a month for access to approximately all music ever recorded, as much as you want, wherever you want. Download every new release as it comes out - why not, it's free!
:-)
The rent vs. buy stuff seems like BS to me. It's like saying that HBO is worthless because you don't get access forever. Or people won't be willing to watch movies in a theater, because they don't actually end up owning anything. How many of you who are scoffing at this idea are Netflix subscribers?
I'll bet that the majority of CDs are listed to for a short time, and then filed away. So why clutter up your life with CDs that you won't listen to? And of course buying and renting music are not mutually exclusive, just as you can (gasp) rent DVDs and also buy them. Subscribing to a rental service doesn't prohibit you from also buying anything you want to listen to long-term.
OK Slashdotters, bring it on
The IPO is not necessarily delayed. The CEO's statements that were taken to mean there was a delay were actually consistent with his previous statements. Google has never publicly stated that they would be doing an IPO.
Except that HP just announced a line of Opteron-based servers.
No, that's the Mini-PC from Vulcan Ventures, run by Paul Allen (MS cofounder & third-richest man in the world).
Here's an article describing OQO, Mini-PC and other ultra-portables, all of which are yet to come to market.
Very nice analysis :-)
Right, credit card fees are a huge drain on a la carte download stores, and a big advantage of sub services is one charge per month. Apple is doing all it can to provide alternate means of payment (bill through AOL, prepaid accounts, gift certificates, etc.), but overall I think there's still going to be a significant number of one-off 99 cent transactions. Remember, Apple themselves say they don't make money off of iTMS. Of course they also say the key is that it's a driver to iPod sales, but I'm not sure about that strategy in the long term, when other hardware manufacturers close the gap in quality with much cheaper products. But that remains to be seen.
By the way, the 250K sub number is already a couple of months old (end of September), and the Apple numbers you cite are up to the minute. Rhapsody has done a big push in the past couple of months - lots of ads and promotion through Best Buy. Even last quarter, without this big ad push they were adding almost 50K subs per month, so I would think they're closing in on 400K subs about now.
Apples and oranges - the labels give different terms for subscription services than they do to "a la carte" download services. The sub services pay a percentage of revene to the labels - I've read that this is about 50%, or $5 on a $10 subscription. The "a la carte" download services pay about 70% or $0.70 on a download.
-
Rhapsody: 250,000
-
MusicMatch: 150,000 (scroll down - it's in the body of the article)
-
MusicNet: 175,000
- Napster: 80,000 (read this recently, can't find the source at the moment)
I use Rhapsody and, for the way I listen to music, it blows away iTMS. It's $10 per month for unlimited on-demand streaming. Of course I have to be connected to use it, but I'm always online anyway so that's not a problem. For a flat fee, I can explore all kinds of new music & listen to old favorites as well.I think you don't understand what subscription services offer - and you're not alone, I've seen this fallacy in a lot of discussion of subscription services. The subscription fee ($10 per month for Rhapsody) gets you unlimited on-demand streaming from a huge library. You can treat it as a streaming-only service, and not pay any more than the flat fee. With Rhapsody, you can also choose to buy permanent downloads for 79 cents.
If you don't care about on-demand streaming and only want to burn permanent copies, then you're better off with iTunes or BuyMusic. But for someone like me who is online constantly, and apparently for 600,000+ other people, $10 per month is a great value for what I'm getting.
the assumption being that on-demand streaming is worthless, therefore the monthly fee is really just a "cover charge" that you pay for permanent downloads.
Millions, probably tens of millions of people in the US sit in front of a computer for hours every day listening to music. Why is it so hard to believe that lots of these people would find it worth $10/month (30 cents per day) for access to essentially the world's largest CD collection?
Somewhat of a nitpick, but AAC is not a DRM scheme. AAC is the codec that Apple uses, and they wrap it with their own propietary DRM scheme (Fairplay). They could just as easily wrap MP3 or AIFF, and AAC could be wrapped using Intertrust or some other DRM scheme.
Because it's not radio! I get to choose what I want to listen to, when I want to listen to it, from an enormous collection of music (almost everything I'd want to listen to). It's like having tens of thousands of CD's.
So what happens when you want to hop in your car and take your Rhapsody music with you? Do you have internet access in your car??
Not yet. But why is it so hard to understand that lots of people find $10 per month worth of vaule in a service that lets you listen to music on demand for an enormous library while you're at your computer? Sure it would be more valuable if I could listen in my car, but it provides more than enough value as it is.
<sarcasm>
Gee I didn't realize that subscribing to a music service somehow eliminated my ability to also buy music! Guess I'd better cancel that subscription! And I'd also better stop going to movies, since that must also preclude me from purchasing DVD's!
</sarcasm>
Why is it so hard to understand that it's not a mutually exclusive choice? Well, maybe it is if you have exactly a $120 yearly budget for music, but that isn't the case for me.
And the bit about subscription services not working for music lovers is completely bogus. The fact is that subscription models work far better for music lovers than for people who may only buy a few top 40 CDs per year. For $10 per month I have access to approximately all the music in the world. It's fantastic! I can listen to all different genres, styles, artists - things I never would have been exposed to via the radio, and things that I never would have bought without hearing first. It's a music lover's dream!
Dude, before you try to correct somebody, you really should know what you're talking about. Real has over 1 million subscribers for all of its services. They have 250,000 for Rhapsody - the premium radio service is a Rhapsody option.
And there's no need to "trust your music" to the company, any more than you're "trusting your movies" by going to a theater chain that may not be doing well financially. If I get value out of the service while I'm using it, that's all that matters.
Boy, have you got me completely wrong. I'm about as far from trendy as you can get. I drive a 1996 Golf. I still use a landline. I have 1000+ CDs, including all of the Beatles albums, plenty of Miles Davis, etc. And Rhapsody is still a great deal.
First of all, your point about listening to 30 days doesn't make sense. I can keep listening to the same music forever, as long as I keep subscribing. And since there's so much music, both new and old, that I want to listen to, and new music being added all the time, I don't foresee cancelling.
Why is it so hard to see that subscribing to a service like this doesn't cut off your other options - you can still buy CD's, you can buy tracks for 79 cents and burn them, etc. It's incredibly presumptious of you to tell me that a subscription service is a "bad deal" for me, when you don't know me or my listening habits, and you don't seem to understand what a subscription service is.
Actually Rhapsody is not a "Trojan." It is a completely separate client which has nothing to do with the RealOne Player. It doesn't install any spyware or try any of the other obnoxious tricks that Real is known for. It was developed by listen.com before they were bought by Real. Real may screw it up yet, or try to merge it into the RealOne Player, in which case I'll almost certainly dump it.
Hey, guess what? I do treat music that way now! And so do 600,000+ other people, and growing! $10 per month for unlimited streaming access to a huge library of music is a fantastic deal for me. Would you want to limit my right to enjoy music in the way I want to, because it doesn't happen to be the way you want to?
Of course I meant "proof that his prediction was correct", not "incorrect".
I'm not a liar, and it's pretty clear that you don't understand basic grammar. Take a look at the quote:
"One question to ask these subscription services is how many subscribers they have."
have, not had. Have is present tense
"Altogether, it's around 50,000."
it's = it is, not it was. It's is present tense
Earlier Jobs does discuss his prediction that MusicNet and Rhapsody would fail, and then cites his bogus current numbers as proof that his prediction is incorrect. Either he's lying or he doesn't keep very close tabs on a business he supposedly dominates (which is hard to believe).
Subscriptions are just another option, they don't limit anything. Does subscribing to Netflix or HBO restrict your ability to buy DVD's?
By the way, Rhapsody does not use any DRM (not saying that couldn't change in the future). It's a streaming-only service, with a separate option to burn unprotected tracks directly to a CD. So what about it do you object to? Are you claiming that the existence of streaming is somehow extinguishing your rights?
No comparison - XM Radio is just radio! Rhapsody allows me to listen to music on demand. I can listen to the same song/album over and over again, whenever I want. It's like the difference between a radio station and a CD. By the way, Rhapsody has radio as well for when you don't feel like selecting music or want to be exposed to something new - with the advantage that if you like a song you can go back to on-demand and listen to more from the same artist.
You clearly don't understand the way Rhapsody works. With Rhapsody I'm not "renting a particular song over and over." The comparison is not "10 cents per listen of a song vs. 99 cents to own forever." Rhapsody's model is that for $10 per month I'm renting basically all the recorded music in the world (OK not all - but most that I care about) for a month. Since there's no additional cost to listening to a new song, I listen to lots and lots of new music that I otherwise would not have listened to, and lots of stuff I probably don't care enough about to spend 99 cents on, but that I enjoy listening to anyway.
What part of "250,000 paying subscribers" (right there in the headline) don't you understand? As far as churn, what part of "46% growth in the quarter" don't you understand?
These are not equivocal statements - these are hard numbers in an earnings report, not something any CFO who doesn't want to go to jail is going to mess with.