Face it: consumers don’t want to rent music or subscribe to it
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Mar 14, 2007 at 3:41am
A Cox News article quotes some industry pundits as saying that Apple’s approach to digital music has stifled subscription services. C’mon, give me a break. It’s one of the few companies that has gotten it right.
Some music industry executives say Apple’s approach has stifled the growth of subscription-based services such as Napster and Rhapsody, from which users “rent” unlimited amounts of music with certain limitations, the Cox News story says. But as the article points out, subscription music download services generated more than $150 million last year, much less than the pay-per-song approach favored by Apple that brought in $800 million.
The truth is that customers have made it clear they prefer to buy music rather than rent it. And, for the most part, subscription services are a failure. In 2006, Apple accounted for 72 percent of overall digital music player sales, according NPD Group market research. As competition increases, the company may not dominate this much forever. But that percentage makes one thing clear: most consumers like the way Apple handles digital music.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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