Apple to offer iPod/iPhone subscription music at last?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 19 March 2008 16:38

Your IT - Mobility

Hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, pay for television via cable or satellite over a subscription model each month, with the TV programming stopping if payments aren’t kept up.

People like listening to their favourite music again and again over the years, but endless re-runs on television of old TV programs indicates an appetite for older content – while the appetite for new content in any medium remains as insatiable as ever.

Pay television companies get people to keep on paying that monthly subscription by offering a smorgasbord of existing content, while offering new content every month – and it works, the pay/subscription TV industry is massive worldwide.

But one of the big problems for the subscription music business is that they are designed for all music players but the world’s most popular – the iPod.

Competitors such as Napster, Rhapsody and others offer subscription music, but only to devices compatible with Windows Media Audio (WMA) files with DRM, to prevent users from simply downloading all the music they want, copying it to their computers and then stopping the payments.

Surely Apple’s subscription service – if it exists – would only offer music with DRM to prevent rampant copying, despite Steve Jobs’ plea to the music industry to ditch DRM, something that seems to have been a successful campaign?

After all, existing music subscription services do just that. Apple already has a DRM system built into every iPod, called Fairplay. It could easily be tweaked so as to delete subscription music if payments have stopped, while leaving any tracks that have been separately purchased to keep permanently.

DRM-free music could then still be sold at full price, offering consumers the choice that suits them best.

The thing is, the FT is reporting that Apple is going to make things difficult, with subscriptions only available for the iPhone – and not for the iPod or iPod Touch. Please read onto page 3.