Unlimited access to music: Are we heading to a new era?
March 19, 2008 – 10:18 amYesterday the Financial Times reported that Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about a radical new business model that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices. This started a storm of posts everywhere.
You probably already read about it but is it really true or is just another rumor taking shape of news? If this really happens it would change the music industry upside down once more. The problem is that I’ve seen Steve Jobs say no to this idea many, many time in the past. Did he really changed his mind?
According to the Financial Times, research has 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 to $8 for a subscription model.
As I see it the method that would work is to give customers the option to buy or not the premium and than when this user register to the iTunes Store he would see all the musics with the price tag of $0.00
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see something like this happen but it is going to be a hell of a fight with the labels and they also should work as hard as possible to maintain the simplicity appeal intact.
