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Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu
On the other hand, you now also have the option of renting access to music for a flat monthly fee, for example from the now-legal Napster Premium service. Once you've signed up and for as long as you continue to pay a flat monthly fee, you get the ability to listen to virtually all the music that's been licensed and made available as "tethered downloads" (you can also buy favorite songs outright, as in the iTunes model).
The question that's obvious to any business major or cost-conscious consumer is, "Which model is the better deal for me?" As is typical for many questions of this sort, the answer is, "It depends."
Some time this summer, while you're waiting for the hamburgers to grill, dig out a piece of paper and a pencil and start making a list of specific individual songs that you and your family and friends really like. How long is that list? A hundred songs? Three hundred songs? A thousand songs? For the sake of argument, let's assume 300-350 songs or so. (That's how long my list was when I tried this exercise, but obviously everyone's list is going to be different, and I probably forgot some that I actually do like.)
Assume you could buy all those songs from iTunes for $0.99/track (in reality, some of the songs may not be available, or you may already have copies of the music on CD). You now have an excellent initial estimate of what a pay-per-track service might cost—in our case, approximately $300-$350, assuming we never find any new songs we want to add to our collection in the future.
Now consider a music rental service like Napster. If it costs $10/month to participate in a Napster-like music rental service, $300 to $350 will buy you roughly three years of music access. Which is better? Here's where the analysis gets tricky.
If I want 300-350 songs to listen to now, $10/month lets me listen to all those songs today if I choose them from the rental model. If I want access to all of those 300-350 songs in the buy-a-track-at-a-time model right now, I'm looking at paying $300-350 in front-loaded costs (ouch).
Moreover, I might like 300 or 350 songs now, but what if my musical tastes change? Instead of listening to classic rock, what if I develop a love of jazz, blues, classical, folk music, or country western? If that happens and I've chosen the buy-a-track-at-a-time route, my library of 300-350 favorite classic rock tracks (or whatever) becomes irrelevant, and I'll need to buy a whole new library of music to satisfy my evolving musical tastes. If, on the other hand, I'm renting music, I merely change the category of music I'm listening to, and soldier on. Renting obviously is more economical than buying music--if I have frequently changing musical tastes.
Or what about new music? I may have 300 or 350 favorites now, but hopefully I'll hear at least one or two new songs a month that I might want to add to my collection. If I'm buying music track-by-track, the meter will continue to tick every time I find a new favorite, while in the rental model, new music will be freely available to me. In fact, the more eclectic my musical tastes, and the larger the number of my current favorite songs, the better music rentals end up looking.
But depending on circumstances, the equation can tip the other way just as easily. For example, if you want to load tracks onto a portable device like an iPod or a portable MP3 player, you'll need to buy the tracks outright whether you're currently participating in a rental service or not. If you're routinely buying tracks on a track-by-track program, those costs are already covered; if you're renting music, however, the tracks you'll need to purchase in order to load them onto a portable device represent an additional cost of choosing the rental model rather than a straight track-by-track purchase model.
Evaluating the two models also forces me to do time-value financial forecasting: how many years might I rent music? Three years? Five years? Twenty years? The longer the rental period, the less appealing those ongoing rental programs look, particularly if I worry about per-month rental costs potentially increasing over time. But long time horizons also hurt track-by-track music purchasers: when you hit retirement age, are you really going to be listening to the same music you purchased twenty years ago? In some cases, sure; in other cases, maybe, maybe not.
In other cases, the format used to distribute music may be key. Apple's proprietary AAC encoding is closely tied to their iPod hardware, although they have iTunes clients for both Windows PCs and Macs. Napster, on the other hand, uses Microsoft's secure WMA format files, a format that is more broadly supported on a range of portable devices (but Napster has no Napster client for the Mac).
Either way, try compiling a list of favorite songs, and see how many favorites you end up with. It just might help you decide which online music model makes most sense for you.
1. Itunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes/
2. Napster: http://www.napster.com/
3. Walmart: http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/
4. Rhapsody (from Real): http://www.listen.com/
10. PC World: "Online Music: New Hits and Misses"
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,111643,pg,1,00.asp
11. USA Today: "Wired for sound: Music download services that rock"
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/reviews/2004-04-12-legal-download-review_x.htm