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]