Zune Music Rental Service, Now With Stuff You Get To Keep, Too
from the getting-desperate? dept
Online-music rental services -- where users get access to a library of songs for as long as they pay a monthly fee -- keep hanging around, despite little apparent interest in them. In an attempt to breathe some life into its subscription service, called Zune Pass, Microsoft is now giving subscribers 10 songs they can permanently keep per month. The company says its research shows that more consumers might consider subscription services at current pricing levels if they got "to take something with them." But isn't that just saying consumers prefer to buy music, rather than rent it? Rentals work for one-time-use items like movies and books, but for things like songs, which people tend to listen to multiple times, subscriptions aren't attractive. The argument that subscriptions are good for discovery doesn't really hold water, either, given the proliferation of online services that let users listen to huge libraries of music for free. One other angle to this news: why would anybody purchase digital content from Microsoft after the PlaysForSure fiasco, in which it shut off its DRM servers, making it impossible to transfer PlaysForSure-"protected" content to any new devices, rendering it largely useless?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: music, ownership, rental, zune
Companies: microsoft
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Zune Pass
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Think of it as having a music rental service for $5/month and also buying 10 non-DRM songs/month. You could load everything you want to hear in your Zune, and mark the songs you want to keep permanently for eventual "purchase".
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When Rhapsody started, it was $4.99 per month. I used it for 6 months or so and enjoyed listening to any music I wanted on demand. This deal finally puts it on par with that, but I can take it with me on the zune, and I find myself considering it again. Of course, I wouldn't waste any of my 10 downloads on non-mp3 format music.
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"Consumers prefer to buy music, rather than rent it..."
However, what does he suggest as an alternative? I'm sure he has all kinds of suggestions as to how we can have an all-you-can-eat music offering for the purposes of putting on our large storage media players nowadays?
No? Shocking.
Unfortunately, the tech media has the same knee-jerk poo-pooing of anything that's not Apple-driven. Wait 'til Apple someday(?) offers a subscription plan that will finally work with iPods. It'll be like the second coming of Jesus(phone?)
Unfortunately, because of iPods' popularity and iTunes branding success (because really, is iTunes the best music store anymore? Hell no.) there are millions out there pirating music because they don't have a better alternative than forking out $.99 per track or $10 an album to fill at this point a ridiculous amount of space.
If you want to acquire music legally, you have to either 1) buy CDs like crazy at an exorbitant cost (or used), or 2) buy tracks and albums through digital stores at an equivalent cost, even though you're getting less (i.e. album art, disc, etc.)
If you're going to do nothing but use a media player, why do you need to own the music? I left that behind a LONG time ago. The only time I buy a CD now (rhapsody sub, thank you) is if I truly support the artist and definitely want a hard backup. Otherwise, a sub plan is great. All-you-can-eat infinite music for a reasonable cost.
Now with Zune.net giving you what amounts to $10 of your sub back? Hell yes, i'm going to take MS up on it. It offers a hell of a lot more value and convenience than trudging through iTunes or pirating.
Eventually the tech "everything should be free" types will realize that paying for some added value is not a bad thing.
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Re:
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Zune Pass Rocks
So kudo's to Microsoft for taking a service that was useful and making it a great deal. For a little more than the cost of a CD, you get to download and discover tons of music, and hey keep 10 of your favs each month.
The Zune device itself is great and Microsoft needs to differentiate themselves from Apple and I think they are doing a good job thus far.
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Re: Zune Pass Rocks
Who ever wrote this article is kinda clueless aswell.
MS needs to get more agressive with the Zune and maybe add some more features to its software, but it is the best value, the best quality player, and has one of the best marketplaces going.
Screw Apple, ipods are for posers and wanna-be's
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Swedish Spotify is creating a major stir in Sweden by offering both a ad-based model and a premium one for approx 15$ / month. I have no experience from Zune - but Spotify in my mind is just brilliant and has moved myself and many swedes with me away from Itunes for all listening, when not on the move.
My friend has an interesting post on this here (http://intellectualasset.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-spotify-model.html )
As previous comment suggest I totally agree that it's worth the couple of bucks a month. Another aspect that is magnificent with spotify is the possibility to share playlists with other subscribers. Perhaps not as good as LastFm hashing and recommendations - but still ok. Naturally one would like to integrate it with purchased tracks or the ipod - but one step at a time..
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I smell Astroturf
Its a shame the "Author" of the post didn't identify himself in an easy to see position, say right at the end of the blog.
If subscriptions are such a no brainer how come nobody seems to want them, leading to desperate moves such as this?
Personally, I don't see myself getting involved in a subscription model. Every where you turn these days, companies are trying to sign you up for a monthly charge.
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Sick of this crap
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Re: Sick of this crap
When I got my Zune my collection consisted of about 2000 tracks and now its at 4600. My Zune Pass is responsible for that because it allows me to check out far more music than I could ever have imagined. People that hate the subscription model refuse to see its value and thats fine with me but ask yourself this: Whats the value of all those CDs when you die? If you live to a ripe old age they won't be worth crap and don't even think they will be vintage because they are far too plentiful now and the master (which is held by the artist and/or record company) is where the true value is.
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Hi, my name is david and I'm a music subsriber.
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Re: David
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Update
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Rental
Now, having said all that, I finally gave up my subscription due to the enormous frustration of dealing with DRM--tracks that wouldn't play, or stopped playing until I re-authenticated, and device crashes and hangs that simply didn't occur with non-DRM files. I now use Pandora, which is great, but still doesn't have the enormous flexibility of the rental service.
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I think it's a great idea!
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Zune
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I have a question...
I've seen on many websites the statements that you can only keep ten of your favorite songs per month instead of however many you want. Is this true? Because I download a boat-load of songs every month. Last month I downloaded 30 songs, and I wish to keep them all. So would a Zune Pass let me download AND KEEP as many songs as I want, or just ten? Also, can you purchase movies on the Zune Pass, such as The Dark Knight or something? Please reply as soon as possible, because by the end of the week, I will have to decide if I want to keep my iPod or my Zune. I cannot have both, so please respond quickly. Thank you.
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