Comments on: Subscription model to dethrone Apple iPod?

By: arnold ortega

arnold ortega — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:43:38 +0000

need music

By: Nick S

Nick S — Wed, 18 May 2005 07:20:18 +0000

Apple can only carry their success with this sale model for so long. It is going to leave a sour taste in the mouths of people willing to pay 99 cents for songs. They are betting on people being too lazy to go to other music for sale site for less. People will catch on, and they will feel scammed. For 6 songs a month, someone could pay for the access to over a million songs. Yeah itÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½s a rental, but if you love a CD you actually want to pay for it, you can and for less than the itunes store. YahooÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½s service is cheaper than apples for the same thingÃ¢ï¿½Â¦ both can burn to a CD. It is so cheap to do this, and for those addicted to free music, there will unquestionably be workarounds to their digital rights protection. In fact you already can, if you’re willing to take the time. So for the price of about 6 songs a month, why not have the cover of downloading legally with the, albeit annoying, ability to bypass protection? The internet generation is all about taking what is given to them and making it do things they want. This is another one of those things, and Apple better shape up and carries their success over to more customers and not loose all this great progress they have thus made. If they maintain this posture they will confirm their dismal market share. I like Apple, and I hope they wake up.

By: Lomesh Shah

Lomesh Shah — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:01:28 +0000

A rather simplistic look into the minds of consumers. For the same reason why people buy homes versus rent or buy CD’s versus borrow from friends the basic mental set up of humans is to “own” stuff. The way I look at it is that after 5 years of renting music I would have paid almost $600 in subscription fees with nothing to show for it. Since I cannot share my subscription on multiple players I am also put in a position of having to pay a couple of monthly fees for the family. While some music tends to get old I have plently of songs that date back 30 plus years that I still love listening to. For this very reason, buying will always win over renting.