Entelligence: Stream on

With the introduction of the iTunes Music Store, Apple brought the business model of buying music online to the masses at 99 cents a song. iTunes changed the dynamic of the music business: consumers re-discovered the single and no longer had to buy a whole CD to get the one song they might want. It’s a model that’s worked well: I’ve bought a lot of music from the folks in Cupertino over the years, and so has everyone else: Apple’s one of the largest music retailers in the industry.

Having said that, Apple’s model isn’t the only one out there. Microsoft, Real, Napster and others have all tried to push the subscription model that allows users to consume as much music as they wish from a catalog of millions of songs for a monthly fee. Some services, such as Microsoft’s Zune Pass, also allow users to keep a certain number of songs each month in unprotected format. Although subscription services will likely continue to need be protected by some sort of DRM I don’t really have an issue with that. Technology like DRM should be used to create new business models, not protect old ones.

Continue reading Entelligence: Stream on

Filed under: Portable Audio

Entelligence: Stream on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

This post is tagged: column, columns, entelligence, features, Microsoft, napster, real, Rhapsody, spotify, Streaming, subscription, subscription music, SubscriptionMusic, zune