Image via CrunchBase, source unknown We'll see if this actually plays out... but news is (re)surfacing that Apple's iTunes subscription plans are for real.Rumors of iTunes music subscriptions fly again | The Industry Standard: "MacDailyNews says the service will be called 'iTunes Unlimited' and offer 50% of the songs currently on the traditional U.S. iTunes store through the program at launch. The subscription will be for one year and be available through iTunes or a retail box, similar to how MobileMe/DotMac is sold. iTunes Unlimited would launch, initially, on the U.S. store only. The subscription would cost $129.99 on its own, $179.99 with MobileMe or $99.99 for existing MobileMe subscribers. The site claims a late September announcement with late October rollout, just in time for the holiday season. TUAW received (almost certainly from the same source) a similar report."
But if it does, I won't hesitate to be the first to say "I told you so". :-)
Also check out some of my speculation on Apple's continued subscription world domination plan from January of this year.
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3 comments:
Strange that Apple would try a model that others have not been successful with. I loved Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and was sad to see it go.
That's their standard operating procedure... belittle the idea, wait a year or two, then launch it with the claim that they "invented" it. See AppleTV, portable video players, movie downloads, music downloads, media players, etc....
Well, my #1 complaint about iTunes is that they don't treat it like a locker, once they know you've got the file that's it - 1 download.
So if you lose a drive with 2000 songs on it, you've just lost $2000 in music (unless you've got it backed up).
Enter MobileMe ... just like you say, an older idea that they're (re-)inventing. Great stuff, well-integrated with the whole apple iLifestyle.
Thing is, now iTunes is making less sense ... I'm really limited to a single iTunes instance that I run my AppleTV, iPhone and iPod off of - if I have 3 Macs I have to sync with exactly one of them. For instance, I can't pick up new podcasts from my work machine.
I think there's a great case to be made for having local files (see AppleTV - it's essentially caching to a local drive), but unlike some of these articles I really see streaming music as a logical next step in the direction they're pushing (MobileMe, etc).
I can't wait until they give me a 1TB 'locker' for all of my Apple apps to sync / stream from. No more backups, no more fileservers, no more remembering which files are where.
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