To: pyslent who wrote (1494 ) 6/10/2005 7:32:49 PM From: Eric L Read Replies (1) | Respond to iTUNES Competition: Rhapsody and the Subscription Model ... you can still pay-per download with these services just as you would with iTunes tinyurl.com The subscription music model isn't going to be for everybody. If you absolutely must own every single piece of music you ever listen to, then Napster To Go is not for you. Likewise, if you only care to hear music you already know about and like, you're better off elsewhere. But the NTG model is extremely attractive to folks like early adopters and heavy music fans, who have an insatiable need to be exposed to new artists. It will also be of use to anyone seeking to broaden their musical tastes by getting relatively inexpensive access to entirely new genres and artists. All of which can live happily side by side with the pay-per download model. Sometimes you want the buffet, and other times you just know what you want. It’s all good. Thinking of the Napster To Go model as “renting music” is short-sighted. What you're really paying for is the complete service of being able to centrally store and organize your music collection online, where it is accessible from anywhere you can access a Windows PC, as well as all of the embedded features available to help you find new music in a way that’s personalized to your tastes. Some people prefer to maintain their own digital music collection entirely locally, but there’s enough of a time and materials cost in that process such that there will be plenty of folks who will gladly pay someone else $15 a month to host and manage not only their current collection, but their future collection as they access it through the service — as well as the management layer on top of the whole works. Store your collection locally and it’s only available locally (though a crop of services such as Orb Networks aims to change that). If your collection lives on Napster’s servers, it’s more easily available to you wherever you are. The Napster To Go service fills the gap by porting your collection to your portable device, obviating the need to be near a PC for access. If Napster were smart, they'd already be trying to get in on the musicphone action as we speak, to create the truly seamless “celestial jukebox” experience as envisioned. Music is moving away from being based in a physical medium that itself must be owned. Music no longer need be seen as an object, when it can more accurately be described as an experience. The iTunes pay-per-download model is still an object model. The Napster To Go model is an experience model, and some people are really going to dig that.
