Is This Guy Dumb or Just Stupid?
This commentary over at Wired is an absolute joke. The topic is why Apple won't offer a subscription based model for their music on iTunes. While this author may be correct in that Apple won't be offering a subscription service, the logic he uses is absurd. Let me give you an example from the article.
Lets look at it this way: You hear a song on the radio that you really like. You go onto iTunes and buy the song for $.99. While you are buying this, you check out some of the artist's other music and find 3 more songs you like so you buy them too. That is four dollar spent just on a whim. What if you wind up liking the entire CD and not just a couple other songs? Now you are spending 10-15 dollars. This is in addition to any music you might be buying otherwise, such as the new album from one of your favorite artists. Even if all you did was allow yourself one CD worth of music a month, that is going to cost you about the same as a monthly subscription. With the subscription, though, you get 2 million songs, not just 15. If you are always buying the latest hit, only to stop listening to it once the next one comes along, you are spending a lot of money on music you rarely listen to. Sure, you may "own" that music, but does owning it matter if you don't use it? There are a number of people that have spent hundreds of dollars on music on iTunes. Some people have spent as much as one thousand dollars and up. While that is not likely the norm, there are people that do it. It would take close to a decade to spend that amount on a subscription, and you would be getting a much larger catalog.
To say that there is no market for subscription services is naive at best. There are millions of users of subscription based models spread across the various offerings. Another thing is that these services also offer the option to buy tracks. If you find a song you just really feel the need to have forever, long after you stop the subscription, you can buy it. The two offerings are not mutually exclusive.
My personal opinion is that having both options is the best solution. I don't know all of the details, but I have to wonder if the money in it for Apple is less with subscriptions. I despise the record labels, so I have a hard time advocating the same thing they are, but I really think that subscription models are a good thing. Offering both options of buying music, and subscribing allows you to keep the zealots happy as well as everyone else. Let me know what you think.
The music business isn't built on long-term rentals; it's built on one hit after another. It's confectionary. Tunes are addictive for a while and then discarded. It's like the drug business: Users are always looking for the next hit.How exactly does this help his argument? He is correct, for the most part, that music is all about the current "thing." However, how he interprets this is completely backwards. According to his logic, it makes sense to buy something forever even though you will only use it briefly. I fail to see how this connection is made. If you are interested in listening to a particular song, artist, or CD right now, but you know that something else is going to take its place next week, why are you buying it?
Lets look at it this way: You hear a song on the radio that you really like. You go onto iTunes and buy the song for $.99. While you are buying this, you check out some of the artist's other music and find 3 more songs you like so you buy them too. That is four dollar spent just on a whim. What if you wind up liking the entire CD and not just a couple other songs? Now you are spending 10-15 dollars. This is in addition to any music you might be buying otherwise, such as the new album from one of your favorite artists. Even if all you did was allow yourself one CD worth of music a month, that is going to cost you about the same as a monthly subscription. With the subscription, though, you get 2 million songs, not just 15. If you are always buying the latest hit, only to stop listening to it once the next one comes along, you are spending a lot of money on music you rarely listen to. Sure, you may "own" that music, but does owning it matter if you don't use it? There are a number of people that have spent hundreds of dollars on music on iTunes. Some people have spent as much as one thousand dollars and up. While that is not likely the norm, there are people that do it. It would take close to a decade to spend that amount on a subscription, and you would be getting a much larger catalog.
To say that there is no market for subscription services is naive at best. There are millions of users of subscription based models spread across the various offerings. Another thing is that these services also offer the option to buy tracks. If you find a song you just really feel the need to have forever, long after you stop the subscription, you can buy it. The two offerings are not mutually exclusive.
My personal opinion is that having both options is the best solution. I don't know all of the details, but I have to wonder if the money in it for Apple is less with subscriptions. I despise the record labels, so I have a hard time advocating the same thing they are, but I really think that subscription models are a good thing. Offering both options of buying music, and subscribing allows you to keep the zealots happy as well as everyone else. Let me know what you think.
Labels: Apple
posted by Jeremy at
10:45 AM
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