A story in today's FT suggests that Apple is talking to music companies about a plan that would give unlimited access to the iTunes library for a "premium" iPod/iPhone purchase.
As the FT says,
The "all you can eat" model, a replica of Nokia's "comes with music" deal with Universal Music last December, could provide the struggling recorded music industry with a much-needed fillip, and drive demand for a new generation of Apple's hardware.
It could probably turbo-boost sales of iPods, which have been ..um, not accelerating as fast as before. (Nobody seems to be able to agree whether one should measure from quarter to quarter or year to year to decide whether they're "slowing down".)
The sticking point, as ever: money. While Nokia is offering an "all-you-can-eat" service where it's reckoned to be suggesting $80 per handset, Apple has pitched rather lower - $20, according to the sources. The music companies aren't biting. Apple, most probably, is going to wait for them to see just how much the credit crunch hurts (EMI, don't forget, is a private equity buyout, which means its loan costs will rise, hitting the bottom line) while it sits on its $18 billion cash pile. One can almost hear Steve Jobs's mellifluous voice now: credit crunch? What credit crunch? We're just offering you a deal, guys.
Again from the FT:
Detailed market research has shown strong appetite among consumers for deals bundling music in with the cost of the device, or in exchange for a monthly subscription, executives said.
One executive said the research had shown that consumers would pay a premium of up to $100 for unlimited access to music for the lifetime of the device, or a monthly fee of $7-$8 for a subscription model.
Apple, which is thought to make relatively little money from the iTunes store compared with its hardware sales, is also understood to be examining a subscription model.
Certainly Feargal Sharkey, who we spoke to in the latest Tech Weekly podcast, might see this as a smart way to get money in music-makers' pockets. And when I tried out the MusicStation offering (available presently on Vodafone), which is an all-you-can-eat offering for £2 per week, it seemed to me - as subscriptions do - the obvious way forward.
The music labels are probably going to start hurting badly enough soon enough that they will go for this. The only question is the price. Which means - as a corollary - that DRM isn't going to go away in a hurry, since you don't want people downloading tons of stuff and then spreading it around their friends, do you? (Though you're welcome to do so with the Tech Weekly podcast, which remains free.)
But here's the question. How much extra would you be prepared to pay for unlimited, forever music on your iPod?
