News from the Music Industry

Buying Guide: Online Music Services

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here: music subscription services. iTunes these are not. There’s a lot we like about iPods and Apple iTunes 7, but iTunes is all about buying music, not subscribing to it. But before you decide to go with a subscription service, you ought to at least consider Apple’s 800-pound musical ­gorilla. If you’re dead-set on an iPod, you’re basically locked into the iTunes store, which sells tracks for 99 cents. If you want a different player, you’re basically locked out. To this point, the vast preponderance of users have gone the iPod/iTunes route. But I think that in limiting itself to sales, Apple has taken an uncharacteristically behind-the-times view. (See “Apple: Get with the Program”) Subscription services are the future.

In case you don’t already know the ins and outs of music subscription services, I’ll acquaint you: For a nominal monthly fee, you get the keys to the musical kingdom—we’re talking millions of songs. You can download as many as you want, play them as often as you want, and, with a subscription upgrade, copy them to a compatible portable player.

What you can’t do, however, is burn songs to CDs; that requires buying them outright, usually at the 99-cents-per rate (though subscribers sometimes get a deal). More important, you’re really renting the songs—if you decide to cancel, your rights to the downloads expire. Staying paid up keeps the DRM-protected audio files unlocked, but stop paying, and eventually they’ll stop playing—usually after 30 days.