Universal and Sony Plan "Free" Music Service 98
Damon Tog writes "Macworld reports that Universal Music Group has enlisted the help of Sony to join forces in a new music service. The price of the subscription is expected to be built-in to the cost of digital music players, leaving the music 'free' to the consumer. 'The plan is still in flux and faces several hurdles, BusinessWeek notes. Among them is finding a business model that allows the hardware makers to subsidize the cost of the music. In addition, the labels have tried to develop their own online music services before without success.'"
All the music fit to hear (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like radio, but with more room to roam in your cage.
The problem is that selling cages to consumers has traditionally led to them escaping, or not entering in the first place in great numbers...
Re:One thing worth knowing (Score:3, Interesting)
Large amount of fairly steady, predictable revenue every month, no matter what people actually want
-they get monthly fees whether or not you use a device or the associated service [say, if the device is lost or broken]
-they are also paid PER DEVICE, so you wind up paying multiple times for the same music [cuz they'll want you to buy a second 'player' for your car, another for your home, and one for each of your household to walk around with (sharing devices is VERBOTEN!)]
They get to push themselves as 'the brand'
-since this money goes into a pool, probably only shared by the big 4 labels, it probably will be split based on market share. So, there is a greater incentive for labels to push the label instead of individual bands [get EMI music, cuz it's got all the best bands]. They could care less if music from band A or band B is downloaded, so long as A & B are licensed from them.
Throws a whole new load of mud on accounting
- as in, which bands/artists/composers get paid what? Now, with Apple, it's pretty clear. You buy a song A. Band X, composer Y, etc.. "should" be paid some money. This would be possible to audit [presuming even basic logs are kept]. With this new system, there is no reason for any logs to be kept, as if the devices 'rent' is paid, it can play whatever it wants.
- and, if you've already bought the music you listen to, this 'rental' fee becomes 100% profit, as there are no artists to reimburse
From a music industry exec (Score:4, Interesting)
People want music that plays over all devices they own.
People want music in varying quality, and are willing to scale the pay of a song to the quality.
People are not willing to pay more than a song is worth. (This is the biggest issue for the labels)
We've figured it out now. People want free (as in beer) music! That's why we have rampant piracy and such lackluster sales. Right? Duh. Those mindless buggers care for nothing but free. But since these music-playing handheld machines still are selling like hotcakes, there must be some way we can get money from them instead!
Obviously we just have to make music "free", and people will buy... erm, rent... er, hang on... enjoy (yes!) our music again!
Trust us, our plans are brilliant this time!
Oh... and I shouldn't write this... It's supposed to be a secret, but here goes: Since this "free" service obviously needs to be limited to the specific devices that are paying us, there must be some DRM involved. That means that we can at any time change this into a pay-per-play scheme. See how clever we are!!!
We should have done this sooner! World domination! We've learned now! Those selfish consumers want nothing but free, so we'll give them "free", all right. Ha! this time, we cannot loose! Brilliant, I tell you!
Re:One thing worth knowing (Score:1, Interesting)
Soon, the average consumer will belive the cost of music is $0. And the XXAA will have defined the total value of their catalogs at $90, considerably less than $9800 per song...