I want my iTunes subscription service!
Great post over at BusinessWeek’s Tech Beat on the business model innovation issues Apple is facing.
Well put, but there is more to it: even as Apple concentrates on the sell-the-hardware-model of old, enhanced by iTMS it still needs alternative paths. This is all about strategic flexibility and adaptivity in a marketspace that is complex.
Subscription services do have advantages … but for Apple the biggest threat seems to be that other outfits will present mp3 players that are better suited (read integrated) to subscription music models and that will consequently hurt iPod sales.
Update: Go and read this related (I will show you why …) post detailing the problems with DRM and how this will piss off consumers who think about which hardware to choose. As MP3 players (e.g. as music-enabled phones) from different vendors come into the market, people will find out that their music won’t play on them or that they can only listen to music that’s been bought from one specific store.
[but] people won’t buy music that’s tied to a specific device [even if its the mighty iPod, my addition] or has onerous limitations on what they can do with it
All the DRM does is frustrate users, all they want is effortless syncing of mobile players (like mp3 phones) … if mobile carriers understand this and establish subscription services that work they will prevail. Just let go of the ownership notion and new related business models will come to mind: imagine a mobile community of people sharing and discovering music together on a commuter train … this won’t work with an ownership model of old that is bloated with DRM – only with a subscription-based business model incorporating community elements.
