Music Companies Are Still Pushing A Stupid Subscription Model
Dear frackin’ Christ! Is it just me, or do the powers that be at the music labels enjoy failing miserably? The lead tech story on the SMH website this morning is all about how the record labels are going to change the way we consume music by offering a monthly subscription service. Why they think people want to pay a monthly fee for music they don’t get to keep is beyond me…
The Christine Sams bylined article is totally willing to believe the record companies’ claims that this is the future of music consumption. With quotes like, “The way Australians buy music is about to be revolutionised” and “Just as people subscribe to pay TV, this would be ‘pay music’” it’s like the article’s a willing participant in this assault on common sense.
For the record, the service will be a $10 a month subscription model running via the bandit.fm website – a Sony Music run music store. It will apparently offer music from all four major labels and will launch in October.
But there are so many reasons a subscription model just won’t work, the biggest being that you lose all of your music if you stop paying the monthly fee. What’s more, the subscription music model is nothing new. Nokia has been doing it for a while now, Sanity had a crack at it and the US is littered with failed attempts and broken dreams.
Then there’s the issue of portability – this system almost certainly won’t work with an iPod, and considering the vast majority of MP3 players in this country are made by Apple, that means there’s going to be a lot of compatability issues. The SMH article says that “All the songs will be streamed via the internet, rather than downloaded to keep” which indicates that there won’t be any portability support at all, which really can’t be a viable option if they hope to actually get people to sign up.
In the age of bittorrent, I’m fully expecting this to fail miserably. What about you lot?
[SMH]
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Comments
Yep. Sounds like a useless waste of time/money to me.
Thing is, there will undoubtedly be a lot of people who buy into the marketing propaganda initially. And for a while, Sony will be making money off it.
I can see a whole bag of complaints (threats of class actions maybe?) when it inevitably dies and everyone loses ‘their’ music.
iTunes has become the defacto in the legal music download space. Now that the majority of iTunes tracks are DRM free there is little reason to NOT use iTunes, it’s just so easy…
Of course, if you don’t want to pay for music at all you will still go the bittorrent path, but in terms of options for paying for music, I don’t see how a subscription model (that is non portable, and doesnt work on iPod) can get any sizeable market share. If it was all you can eat and open MP3 format that you can keep, maybe, but still a slim chance.
Maybe it is Sony Ericsson trying to offer a mobile music alternative to Nokia? (and allow 3G streaming)?
The article has a Guy Sebastian photo attached to it, so I guess that sums it up.
This model always fails.
this is my reply to the record companies… i’m going to download my music to keep whether it is from the artist direct, or via bittorrent. you record company vultures need to stop raping both the artist and consumer! you haven’t learned yet that we consumers are sick and tired of having half baked radio pop crap shoved down our throats! we should have choice and we’ll make that choice righly based on what we want… not what you guys are pushing! farking bunch of smack dealers if you ask me!
fail. i would like to see a subscription model where you pay a flat monthly fee. you actually download the tunes to your pc, drm free. x amount of songs per subscription level per month.
as for that apple incompatability stab… i pin that one down to apple and their (yes im going to say it), monopolistic policy on their hardware and software support. use our itunes or use nothing at all (without third party support). look at the palm pre itunes support… wasted. thanks again apple – force us all to use your software and your hardware only, dont give the consumer choice. and screw u ppl who complain about MS only shipping IE in windows… i see only safari in my mac OS on first bootup.
(a little off topic, sorry).
Well…I’d be interested if it was at the right price and on the right platform. Certainly if iTunes had a subscription option I’d be interested.
That’s about the only way I’d pay for music digitally. At least till someone starts offering it in a lossless format to buy.
ugh. This is just a regurgitated press release. Why dont they just slap a big Sony logo over the SMH one and be done with it?
Also, apparently ‘families’ will be able to access all this wonderful Guy Sebastian material for only $9.99 a month. Given I’m not married with children, I guess this isnt for me.
Or, more accurately, actual journalism and writing skills aren’t for Christine Sams.
Who’s to blame for the shit journalism here? If Chris Sams refuses to run the press release pretty much verbatim, suddenly there’ll be no access to any events, reviews, artists/celebs from their stable, and this could affect other journos from the same publication. Sometimes this could be a pretty costly boycott.
Jack is on the money but does she have a choice?
Based on that same argument, you could say “Why would someone pay $150 a month for a piece of software they don’t even get to keep?” – when this is the model for pretty much all the software companies that are still experiencing healthy growth in the current environment… (salesforce.com, netsuite, etc). There is no single perfect pricing model – each has its benefits and weaknesses. I think this approach is GOOD as it offers the consumer choice (they won’t force you to use one or the other). I know plenty of people who already subscribe to such a service and they love it. But for me it would not work.
On a somewhat related note, I’ve had a large number of mum and dad types bring their PCs to me for a virus clean-up. Invariably its because their kids have been using something like Limewire to download music.
They’re always surprised when I explain to them this is both illegal and dangerous. And when I suggest something like iTunes instead, they’re not interested because then they have to pay.
I hate subscription services in general. mainly because If i’m spending money on it in the first place, its likely that its something that I would want to listen to/ watch over and over again. I can see the benefit in renting movies if they keep changing the format every few years, making your old collection look like shit, but music of all things? I suppose it could be useful for discovering new bands you like, but i have the radio for that.
simon, what you’re looking for is the zune pass that Microsoft has (currently only in the US and, maybe, Canada). For $US15 you can download all the music you want and each month you get to keep 10 tracks so you’re effectively paying $US1.50 per track plus have access to all the other music via the subscription service. Unfortunately not all artists/songs are available for subscription (eg. Led Zeppelin) but you can purchase most of those tracks or just buy the CD and rip them. I’m hoping that MS brings this model internationally when they lauch the Zune HD later this year.
“there is little reason to NOT use iTunes”
Sure, except for those of use who’d rather surf without a firewall than install iTunes on their PC…
If this is designed to work with a 3G phone (ie streaming music to the phone) as the Bandit.fm radio connotation indicates, it could work OK for many..
If they truly think people sit at their PC to listen to music though, well, they deserve to die the death they keep writing press releases about.
There is/has been an OK subscription model somewhere, listen to whatever you like and get to keep a certain number of tracks per month.. ie $10/month=unlimited DRM’d content plus 10 tracks to keep.
I’d support such a model, provided the kept tracks were DRM free and available as lossless.
I’m not a fan of buying lossy music and as a result I haven’t bought a single digital song.
meh, who buys Sony anymore anyway. Its a dying brand in the portable music market. The more the music and movie companies fight against the digital change the more piracy and ultimately loss of money they will encounter. Wake up and realise that the consumer is not dumb anymore, they will get music or movies with or without you. deal with it and prosper, fight it and fail. its very simple.
it isn’t such a bad idea – just check out how well Spotify (spotify.com) is doing in the UK and Europe. I happily paid 10 pounds a month to consume as much music as I could sitting at my desk and their ad model is great for those who don’t want to pay – artist still get paid
I wouldn’t know for certain but I get the feeling the adventurous among us would be able to capture the music being streamed and in effect be able to score unlimited tracks for a measley $10 a month.
Fact is I don’t see myself streaming music away from home over a spotty 3G connection and at home I have access to all the songs I want and can get, pretty quickly, legit tracks when heard over free streaming channels. FAIL. (likely)
A free streaming subscription service, with the ability to buy 99c (AUD) tracks sold inconjunction with a Government built free wifi, in all major cities. WIN. (unlikely)
I can see this having is positives but is far outweighed by the negative. Maybe for a party or similar it would be great to have access to all that bad commercial music to entertain the masses. But i see that being more of a “once off” purchase. Even though the price point almost makes it attractive, i want to keep the music i’m paying for. I like listening to old MP3’s i got 10 years ago. Too bad if i was subscribing, and then i can no longer get the music i like. Wrong move again.
Spotify’s great because it’s the same sort of thing, but you can choose between a free, ad-supported version and an ad-free €9.99 a month subscription. The pro version also allows iPhone streaming, although that would be pointless here until the networks introduce unlimited data allowances. Hopefully this will take off and either Spotify, or someone similar will launch a free alternative.
When I had a zune but couldn’t get the zune pass, due to myself not living in North America, I didn’t understand the notion of a subscription service either. But then someone in a forum said something which made sense. If you are the type of person who downloads a whole lot of music, subscription services could work for you. You could download around 20 albums a month to try them out and then just actually BUY the ones you enjoy. 10 bucks a month to try out all the music you want doesn’t seem so bad, especially if some albums are growers or just plain shit.
Why doesn’t someone set up a per GB model.
charge me $10/month for 10 gig of whatever i want. if i want higher quality i will get less, if i want more i can buy more just like my net subscription.
It also has the advantage of people getting paid for what is downloaded the most since he download data will be easily extractable form their servers.
But not something FORCED as part of a net subscription as some gov/media industry types have proposed. It has to be an opt in service.