This is the problem. You were never "buying" the music in the first place. Do you REALLY think people think they are buying millions of songs for a 1 month subscription fee? Do people think that they now own movies they rent from Blockbuster or view on Cable TV?


Well, Napster seems to be the hybrid that breaks the rule, both charging you a fee to "lease" the song, and a general subscription fee. That's really not a good combination, as we've seen here.

The cost of music on a subscription service is microscopically small unless you are only listening to 1 CD worth of songs per month. If that is the case, then buying makes more sense. But if you are listening to a lot of music each month, the cost of buying versus a subscription is astronomically higher AND you don't get the freedom of selection or access to the variety that you are limited to by only getting the stuff you buy.

I think in the short term, most people will do both. They will subscribe to a service to listen casually to a huge variety of music, and then for the handful of albums or songs they really love, they buy a download copy and then burn it to CD or whatever else they want to do with it. I suggest signing up for one of the subscription services and really trying it out. It's addictive.

And the idea is that far more people will listen when it doesn't cost anything to do so when you're searching for new music. The first digital service that does a good job of filtering all the indie music so they can make quality recommdendations (from small niche genres to simply pointing out popular tracks) will really take full advantage of the potential. So far none of the services has paid much attention to half their music inventory that comes from CD Baby and other indies.

These are all excellent points. Of course, the problem with music is that there is a lot of it that, frankly, sucks. And advertising counts for a lot here, something that the indies can't easily compete with.

The story of the music busiess so far is that it's worth it to spend most of your time on the hits, since that's where the largest percentage of the revenues come from. So these services would tend to highlight the hits, and let the long tail take care of itself.

But most services also have just a search bar, so in that, our songs can come up. Still, if I was presented with a search bar, I'd end up searching for songs that I knew, since I have no idea who those new worthy indie bands are.

I have to admit, you've tempted me to join one of these subscription-based services. Not Napster, however. Do you recommend one over the others?

------------------
See the The Indie Band Survival Guide : Everything we've learned so far.

See the The Indie Band Survival Guide : Everything we've learned so far.