The first part of this page is a letter I sent out on Dec 7, 2008. I was taking a hard look at subscription services and tried Rhapsody, which seemed to have the best interface. I loved it. Some of the numbers may be off now as things change quickly, but you get the idea...
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Here is a fantastic
article from Wired magazine every writer and actor should read about digital
media:
Universal's CEO Once Called iPod Users Thieves, Now He's Giving Songs Away
It explains how music distribution and money flow is completely
changing to subscription based services and how the music industry wants to
break Apple's tightening grip on the music industry by offering music without
the constraints of digital rights management (DRM).
Want to
experience the future for free? Try this: Both Rhapsody.com and napster.com have free trials
you can download. I chose Rhapsody. It's like iTunes, except that
instead of 99 cents per song purchased, it's $15 to "rent" all the music in the
world per month. Yep, you can download, stream and sync with a compatible
media player as many of their 5 million songs to your computer as you want for
just $15 a month. Try it. It's amazing. It's cheap. It's
easy. It's intoxicating.
When I signed on to Rhapsody three
days ago, I downloaded and synced to my tiny portable media player about 40
complete albums in about an hour. I still haven't paid any money for them
(still a trial). I could download a thousand albums tonight if I
wanted. All legal. No extra money to pay. I can then
access all this music as well as playlists I've created online from anywhere on
planet earth with a computer with web access. Now, imagine in addition to
all those songs every cartoon, every television show and every movie ever made
also available for, say, an additional $15 a month- for all of it. A
gigantic Tivo-like Video on Demand that is loaded at all times with all video
and audio content ever made. That is the future of legal entertainment
consumption. It offers regular consumers what millions of digital
pirates get for free, except you get a nice interface and it costs $15 a month
instead of nothing.
I urge you to try one of these services to
personally experience what the studios and we artists are up against. As
the above article points out, this subscription based model may well
be the best firewall against piracy the studios can come up with and still
get paid. As the above article points out, the brilliant iTunes model may
not be long for this world. NBC
has just pulled its video content off iTunes and the music industry is
lining up against it in force, too.
I urge you to read the
above article and try music subscription.
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From Cnet's mp3 department- this will be as much about video as
music. The comments on the first article show consumers understandable
enthusiasm for the subscription model of selling content. Personally,
I find the subscription model is the most compelling by far, perhaps with some ownership sprinkled in.
Subscription Music's Future, Part 1
"...subscription music service providers are likely to grow stronger over the next five years because of the consolidation of providers, the increasing amount of portable, networked devices, the breakthrough of the mobile music phone, and the generational shift of young music consumers with huge appetites and no hang-ups about owning music because of fears of scarcity. Apple's iPod and iTunes store have stood as the biggest roadblocks to the adoption of subscription music these past 5 years, but they have unwittingly set the stage for subscription music's increased viability as consumer's expectations for deep catalogs of affordable, on-demand music spill over into the areas of mobile phones, home stereos, and worthy iPod alternatives."
Subscription Music's Future, part 2
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