"The world's biggest music companies are expected to ask Apple to introduce a music subscription service to its iTunes digital media store as part of negotiations to renew their agreements with the computer company," reckons The Financial Times.
Executives at Universal and other labels believe a subscription service could prove more lucrative for them than iTunes' prevailing model of charging consumers 99 cents per track because it would increase consumption of music. It would also entitle the labels to a share of monthly payments, in addition to small licensing fees each time their songs are played.
Meanwhile Ars Technica has a story based on a report by UK-based Enders Analysis, headlined DRM, lock-ins, and piracy: all red herrings for a music industry in trouble. The story says:
Where did the industry go wrong? At the height of the rush to DRM, the record labels decided to put their money behind expensive and ultimately unattractive subscription services at a time when Napster 1.0's popularity was it its peak. The industry favored an approach where consumers would be locked into monthly subscription deals that control how you used content.
So are subsciption services a symptom of illness or a cure?
Still, several music stores already offer subscripton services and these don't seem to have taken off. It's not clear that one based on iTunes would fare any better, even if Steve Jobs went along with the idea -- and there's no evidence that he will.
