With Microsoft's new equipment and DRM you pay as little as $10 a month for ongoing access to hundreds of thousands of songs, instead of buying song downloads one at a time for about a dollar apiece:

iPod Killer

As much as you might worry at the word "Microsoft" being in there, this could be the biggest and best thing to hit the music world in 50 years.

Imagine a wireless portable device, a $10/month subscription, and all the music you can listen to.

You might not get transparent CD quality sound, but for some music fans this deal would still be heaven.

As ever, it depends on the content and the price when launched.

But, up till now, I've probably spent more than an average of $10/month on music. Which suggests they either need to get people into this who don't buy so many CDs at the moment, or the subscription price needs to be higher for them to make a profit.


I wonder how long it would take for the desire to own CDs to vanish? It depends on how the service works - if it still feels like your music (i.e. tracks don't vanish, you can manage it easily etc) then I think CDs could be irrelevant for most people. Why buy something you can damage or loose, and have to store somewhere, when a subscription gets you the same thing, everywhere, without worry? I think all those CDs people own could look like a poor investment!


If the subscriptions are distributed within the music biz on a pay per play basis, it could be the fairest thing to happen to artists in a long time. If the majors don't lock it all up for themselves!

Cheers,
David.

P.S. this has been coming for many years. It's one of the rare instances where copy protection actually gives something to the consumers: without the DRM, the subscription model can't work.

I almost completely agree with 2Bdecided. Although I doubt it will be any fairer to the artists. In fact, it allows the majors to control distribution, which is what they really want.

My biggest concern for a subscription on an iPod like device is that I won't just want an iPod device. I want to listen, on occasion, from my home stereo, or from my car. So if this device can plug into those... I'd seriously consider this.

What would be too cool would be a device that provides wireless, high-speed access... Listen to whatever, wherever.

Interesting for the mass public, but I wonder who would go for this amongst this community. I suppose there are a number who would support the WMA format (as this has to be the Microsoft format of choice), and I can see there being a fair argument for WMA Pro at a higher bitrate. But of course, Microsoft isn't going to use Pro, nor a high bitrate. They'll be using standard WMA for compatability at a "decent" (to most people) bitrate, which just isn't worth the trouble, frankly, for most people.

The big issue for many of us, and the reason why there is an acceptance of iTunes here at all (it isn't for the application, considering how troublesome it can sometimes be) is because of the format they support (as well as the freedom their DRM provides). Microsoft can only be competitive if they match or surpass iTunes in quality and freedom of use. That's my opinion, anyway.

"a hacker-resistant clock"

Something tells me that will be hacked within a week.

hm from what i see this is simply the announcement for a to-be-released technology not a music store which actually offers such things

also i pretty much doubt that anyone will ever make such an offer for 10$ (thats too low to be not marketing-only )

At least I can listen to radio and hear all the music I want to hear for free. And I'm not listening to one of those evil one-hour-playlist-rotation stations.

What are you talking about? Radio is just one big static playlist... same stuff... over and over and over. ;-)

yes indeed... that's what the clock is for. it ticks down, not up

aside from the stupid tin-eared WMA format, that's pretty fair.

although i suspect it's deliberately fair... microsoft make no secret of wanting WMA/V to be adopted as standard (finally getting rid of that pesky MPEG organization...) no matter how crap their proprietry technologies are.


[edit]

just thought of something... this seems fair on the face of it, but it is another step toward pay-per-use society, with exploding DVDs, time-bombed music and a rapidly declining amount of actual culture available. it eliminates the possibility of "digging out an old song" like you can with CDs. you own it forever (or until it decays, gets scratched or stolen, or simply lost). with rented music this possibility is not quite so accessible. even if the service were to exist 10 years from now, it's doubtful the song you wanted would still be there... culture is on fast-rotation, and not much value is placed on old stuff, regardless of whether it's good or not (there's obviously both good and bad in all times, though the ratio often changes sharply like now)

Who wants to rent music ?

If your favourite band releases a new album you're going to buy it to listen to it as many times as you want, whenever you want. Something you can already do with services like Itunes, Allofmp3 & Audiolunchbox.

Why pay to listen to it for a limited amount of time ?

Good question. Why do people pay monthly for cable TV, or HBO, when they can buy the DVD?

Because for a set monthly price, you could presumably listen to your pick of hundreds of thousands of songs. Given that I paid $100 last month for 10 CD's (for maybe 100 songs), this is a bargain. I bet my monthly average is $30-60 a month. Not to mention that if I damage or lose the CD, I'm out of luck.

So... If you pay $10 (which would be low) for a CD containing 10 songs, once a month, it would take you 3,333 years to reach 400,000 songs, and $399,960. Not to mention a way to store, access, and backup those songs. Granted, we don't know if MS is going to do this (it could be a teaser), and we don't know how many songs, or what quality they are.

And if you hear something you like you're going to buy it anyway, right ?

Wouldn't you rather pay $0.01 per Mb for mp3's that you can keep and use any way you like, as you can with Allofmp3 ?

The point is there are already better alternatives available.

This Janus idea sounds like M$ appeasing the RIAA that they're actively combating piracy and at the same time propagating their own propriety format WMA.

if the downloads were lossless... then it would be a deal

i doubt that a physical medium will go out of style, i know very few older people that are technologically savvy, and less that own any sort of electronic gizmo, and even less that are into filesharing/downloading/etc.

plus, with software like DC/furthur to grab bootlegs (or, legal music and...) etc., my music tastes have definitely changed.

(and paying $4-8 for used CDs isn't the last resort on earth)

also, i'd imagine that their resources of britney spears & co. don't match my listening taste anyways


later

I tend to watch my favourite tv series' or films maybe once every few years, whereas my favourite albums every few months. Music doesn't lose its appeal when you know all the words, whereas a tv show does

That is one simple example. There are others.

It comes down to the fact that most people can't afford to "own" everything they want. If CD's were free, most of us would have 4000 of them. But they're not, so we have to make careful choices about what we buy.

If for the price of 1 CD a month, you have access to more audio than you've ever had before (or could ever afford), who knows how often you'd listen to the same CD. I'm not saying I'd never buy a real CD (or whatever medium is in fashion at the time).

The price of 1 CD per month... how many times have you pruchased a CD and only liked 2 songs on it? Me? Every month. It's a no brainer for me, assuming the selection, ability to play everywhere I need, and the quality are there.

Most online services today have 400-500K songs. That's a small number of what's actually been recorded. If they get DRM figured out (in a universal way), that number could baloon, and you'd have a huge selection. Possibly even from music that is no longer in print.

DRM is not going to go away. It's a mess today because everyone has their own scheme. But that won't last. However, it's clear that accessing music online is popular, and will become more popular as time goes on. While I think that online, on-deman access will become the trend (and not die), it will become encumbered with DRM, and these services you see today (of being able to download unprotected music) will eventually die.

There is a very simple answer to that. Because no matter how good a movie is, you're not going to watch it 100 times, even if you do buy the DVD. So renting makes a lot more sense for movies, etc.

On the other hand, I am sure that I have listened to "The Dark Side of The Moon" at least 500 times.

Me too. At least.

And there would be nothing stopping you from listening to it anohter 500 times using a subscription model. That, and any other album on file when the urge hit you.

This is not dissimilar to the XM-Radio device. You have to pay a monthly fee to listen to a wider range of stations. I just watched a news clip where they estimate that in new cars with an XM-Radio installed, the renewal rate is about 75%. Now why would someone pay for radio? Variety. Breadth.

If you're the type to listen to a small number of CD's a large number of times, the subscription model may not make sense. I would love a huge selection for a small monthly price. I waste more than $10 in beer every month.

That sounds like plan WM DRM, which has been out and uncracked for some time (ignoreing the ancient version that was cracked and dropped years ago).

I'd pay £25 a month to download what I want, whenever I want, and without quality/DRM restrictions. I'd even sign up for 2 years at a time, cash upfront.

However this service doesn't interest me. I don't care about the price, but the DRM kills this service at birth for me.

EDIT: Mike, do you know anything about people looking at cracking their DRM? Is it the nearest we have to 'uncrackable', or have people simply not bothered? And what about the DRM in SACD or DVD-Audio? It'd be interesting to see how long these systems survive.

you forget that this service is illegal in most countries So $0.99 per song would be more realistic...

[quote=tboehrer,Apr 2 2004, 09:04 PM] [QUOTE]It comes down to the fact that most people can't afford to "own" everything they want. If CD's were free, most of us would have 4000 of them. But they're not, so we have to make careful choices about what we buy.

If for the price of 1 CD a month, you have access to more audio than you've ever had before (or could ever afford), who knows how often you'd listen to the same CD. I'm not saying I'd never buy a real CD (or whatever medium is in fashion at the time).

The price of 1 CD per month... how many times have you pruchased a CD and only liked 2 songs on it? Me? Every month. It's a no brainer for me, assuming the selection, ability to play everywhere I need, and the quality are there. [/quote]
Although I am quite particular about what I like and don't like, I have only two or three cd's out of 200 which I don't like more than half the tracks off. And I don't think my listening habits would change that much if I was given access to a vast library of music for $10/mo, it wouldn't be anything new to me.

I generally access the 'free libraries' of P2P when I hear of an album that might interest me. If I like it I buy it, if not it's just wasting space on my drive. This is a strong enough filtering process to stop cost being the limiting factor on what I buy, it's now just the rate at which I can find new (or old) music which I like.

While I guess this is maybe not a typical scenario, it brings a point.. If I wanted to listen to a wide variety of tracks, I'd browse the digital radio stations we have. I prefer to listen to stuff I like, so I keep my own collection of music. The important word to me is 'keep'

This is an intriguing point. My gut reaction to a subscription is "no way," but from a logical standpoint the reaction is "why not?" I suppose it could work.

There are definitely pro's and con's to be considered:

Pro's:
* Potentially vast catalog (eventually the size of all recorded content ever?)
* Potentially low cost access to the vast catalog
* Hardware independent access to content - stream/download it as needed
* Codec / format independent access to content - service can reencode as needed / appropriate
* No physical media to collect dust, lose, get stolen, scratch and take up space
* No "2 tracks for the price of 10" bundling

Con's:
* Risk of userous escalating subscription prices
* Risk of disappearing service / content
* Overcomplex/overrestrictive DRM could prevent reasonable "fair use"
* No web access, no music
* "Least common denominator" of codec quality/bitrate may limit fidelity
* No standards (yet) for codec, DRM, lyrics, cover art, etc.
* Difficult to manage - need a virtual catalog/playlist

I think it comes down to the catalog, standards and trust - none of which are there yet.

UPDATE:

Microsoft has announced that Dell, Archos, Creative, Rio and iRiver have said they will support their DRM as a way to let subscription music services such as Napster and RealNetworks' Rhapsody move to portable MP3 players.

M$ DRM

This is not a good thing. This is an anti-piracy too, not a music tool. What it will allow is songs bought of napster 2.0 to be played on any media player.l

Rent music? Ewwww!!!!

not exactly! the reports says "the technology--internally code-named Janus--has been seen as a potential way to let subscription music services such as Napster and RealNetworks' Rhapsody move to portable MP3 players

it also says

as real is using 192kbps aac, could this mean that they are using m$'s drm in their files?

You guys are forgetting about the obsessive-compulsive collectors out there who would never give up ownership.

Also, how will you be able to decorate your room?

Seriously, there is a lot to be said about browsing through your CD/record collection and playing a few tunes, especially in the company of friends and beer!

[EDIT] One factor that has also not been mentioned is that this is ment to be a wireless product - who will pay for connectivity (to the internet). I'm sure that's not included in the $10/month. You will have to take this into consideration as using this technology on a cell phone/PDA could prove cost prohibitive.