commentary Is it too late for an Australian subscription music service? We look at the history and rocky future of pay-per-month music.
At the January 2007 launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Sanity to launch Australia's first subscription-based online music service. The offering, scheduled to debut in April 2007, would have allowed users to download up to 300 tracks per month from the Sanity catalogue at one fixed price.
A year on from its expected release date, that service still hasn't launched. The quiet disappearance of the store -- which Microsoft reps have confirmed as a shelved project -- is just one example of the shift away from subscription music. Given the local success of pay-per-track models such as the ubiquitous iTunes store and the gradual dissolution of DRM, has Australia missed the subscription music boat?
Rhapsody launched the first high-profile subscription music service to American users in December 2001, in the middle of a revolution. The first iPod had just hit the shelves, streaming Web radio sites like Live365.com were in full bloom, and the masses were just warming to the idea that they could preview and discover music online. A service like Rhapsody, which promised subscribers unlimited access to its growing music catalogue, made music junkies salivate. It also pointed the way to a brave new world where people no longer needed physical or virtual media.
The future didn't go quite as planned, however. Because the illegal-but-free P2P world offered the most music, when Apple finally added an online store to their iTunes music software, Rhapsody's subscription music revolution -- which has since included Yahoo Music Unlimited, MTV's Urge, Napster, Zune Marketplace -- had started to lose momentum.
Today, the only remaining outlets for subscription music are Rhapsody, Napster, and the Zune Marketplace -- and none of these are available to Australian residents. Many factors contributed to the subscription music stall, not the least of which is the fact that the most popular MP3 player in the world is deliberately incompatible. Can the model survive?
Rumours of an iTunes subscription service have been denied by Steve Jobs.
At the 2008 Macworld expo in January, Steve Jobs quieted iTunes subscription service rumours by proclaiming that people don't want to rent music, they want to own it (unlike movies, which are available for rent through iTunes in the USA). Jobs' logic is that because people listen to a favourite song hundreds of times throughout their life, a file that might expire doesn't make sense. For companies like Rhapsody and Napster, the million dollar question is, "Is he right?" The answer is more complicated than you'd think. I would never be so bold as to call Mr. Jobs a liar, but I think his Macworld statement is misleading.
The subscription vs. purchased music debate presents a false choice -- a black and white view of a world without accounting for all the mess in between. While it's true that most music consumers do just fine purchasing music a la carte through services like iTunes, Destra or eMusic, the idea of a coexisting "celestial jukebox" isn't any less potent. It's like saying the iPod and FM radio can't coexist. The concept of DRM protection for purchased music is clearly dumb (and still practiced by iTunes, by the way), but the real reason iTunes will be the last service to adopt a subscription music model is because it doesn't have to. Apple's existing music retail store is already enjoying a charmed existence without a subscription music option rocking the boat. Why the hell would Apple open up an all-you-can-eat buffet in a restaurant already raking it in on overpriced entrees?
What will the playing field of digital music look like five, 10, or 20 years down the line? The only predictive statement I'm willing to make is that the people of tomorrow, like the people of today, will want choice -- choice about what music they want to hear, where they want to hear it, what devices they want to hear it from, and how much they want to pay for it.
Ella Morton contributed to this story.
dan_rox77
25/03/2008 03:26 PM
I reckon that there should be a legal, online music store which lets you buy a track for $0.10-$0.50; that's when I'll think about buying music online...
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kerrrry
26/03/2008 04:07 PM
It appears that in the subscription model, the recording artist gets extremely little money, and might never get to make any more music. This article literally says iTunes is overpriced but when you consider that everyone needs to get paid for their work, then each entity in the food chain is making very little, especially the record label and recording artist. Paying less means you'll get less music to choose from in the future, except from people who work 9-5 at something else and spend one day a week trying to make music in their closet, if they're lucky. Do you want to complain about paying for clothes? Try buying it from some amateur who makes pants in his/her spare time. See how much you like that. Then decide if you like that model for the music business. Or would you rather pay a fair price for a professional product.
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x-musician-x-label-owner
26/03/2008 04:26 PM
there are some really lame assumptions that people make: 1. subscription music is profitable enough to keep bands afloat, that's wrong. It's just an effort to get illegal downloaders to pay something instead of nothing. 2. people assume musicians get rich off music, that's wrong, only a few big stars do, and they end up broke too because it costs so much to make and market records. 3. rockstars are set for life. wrong, they end up having to get regular jobs unless they tour for the rest of their lives, because the music sales generate almost no money. a band might make ONE dollar from a CD sold. Per song it's only a few cents. 4. People assume there are millions of music buyers. Yeah, for a handful of bands, the rest don't have that many buyers, mostly just listeners. So making only a few cents a track usually means "don't quit your day job." that's the way it normally works.
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Ian
31/03/2008 12:40 PM
Boo hoo to the poor record labels. The reason there are a few superstars and the other artists go hungry is because the labels market it that way. And they encourage artists to live extravagent lifestyles so that they can retain power over them (e.g. so sorry to hear you have spent those millions - guess you have to do yet another tour). The subscription model is an opportunity for the cash to be spread more evenly amongst the artists. Personally, I'd like to see a internet radio/podcast type service for a monthly fee where you can interact with the songs as they are played. For example, hit a button to add to a favourite list so they are played to you more often (also useful for producing more accurate charts) or to indicate a song I dont like and dont want to hear again. Also, I could hit a button and download a higher quality version of the song to keep for an extra fee. I would like to listen to subscription channels with dynamic programming based my learned preferences rather than what record labels want to push down my ears. Without interactive features like the above I will just listen to the radio for free.
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