Ever since 2003, all of my music (about 15GB worth) has gone through iTunes. I have always had an iPod, and more recently an iPad. Never an iPhone. Recently, I have found myself wanting to purchase more and more music since I am getting into entirely new genres, however given the iTunes ownership model, it's getting cost prohibitive. I've researched Rhapsody a bit since they are a major player in the subscription model, however their Android app has terrible reviews and they aren't compatible with the iPad. Zune is locked into Microsoft products. Spotify seems love/hate plus generally requires an internet connection if you want to keep things convenient.

Does anyone have experience with subscription based digital music? How does it compare to the iTunes ownership model? Any ideas/recommendations? Thanks.

I may be wrong, but I believe you can use another site to buy music from then transfer it to iTunes. I believe iTunes is the only site that puts limits on its MP3s. Not sure if that answers your question or not

I've had a Zune Pass for a few years and I love it. If you're not invested in Microsoft's ecosystem it doesn't get you far but for me with a Windows Phone, Xbox, and a couple Zune players (not to mention the PC software which will be native in Windows 8) it's impossible to beat the integration and the the flexibility since they have both a standard pay-per-song marketplace (which is entirely DRM-free so it doesn't lock you in) and the subscription which gives the option of downloading or streaming, whichever is more convenient. They did just drop the price from $15 a month to $10 to compete with Spotify and the like, however it was at the expense of the monthly song credits which were always sort of the best part (it basically made it like paying for an album every month and getting access to the entire catalog for a couple bucks more), although existing subscribers got grandfathered in. I have an annual sub that I won in a Twitter contest they had so I won't have to decide if I want to move to the new plan until next June.
Overall I really like the subscription model purely out of convenience. I used to torrent all of my music and it was really a pain. Paying a dollar for one song feels like such a waste but I've always felt like I've gotten my money's worth out of my ZP and it has made all this music so easily accessible.

Quoting DeltaMD90 (Reply 1): I may be wrong, but I believe you can use another site to buy music from then transfer it to iTunes. I believe iTunes is the only site that puts limits on its MP3s. Not sure if that answers your question or not

No, iTunes puts no limitations on its music.

Music you buy from the iTunes store is DRM-free and can be used wherever you want, gouverned primarily by your local copyright laws. (The AAC format they use is the official successor standard of MP3 and provides much better quality than MP3 at the same bit rate.)

The titles merely get stamped with the iTunes account through which they have been bought, but that should merely be a mild deterrent against unlimited spreading of the files and is no actual restriction.

And all music managed by the iTunes application can copied elsewhere. You can simply select "Show in Finder" for any title and iTunes will show you the actual file, which you can copy wherever you want.

All music managed by iTunes is openly accessible in a folder structure organized in the usual manner:
Artist/Album/Title

The thing with subscription services is that they generally use streaming or DRM-restricted files (which can only be used with special software and sometimes only on specific hardware) and once you end your subscription, all your music goes away again, while you can use music bought from iTunes, Amazon or others indefinitely.

Quoting Klaus (Reply 3): No, iTunes puts no limitations on its music.

Except that you have to pay licence fees on all devices able to decode them. And yeah, every item you buy that are approved by apple has, compared to other licenses in the industry, huge licensing costs.

I use Spotify for all music, works perfectly.  

Quoting planewasted (Reply 4): Except that you have to pay licence fees on all devices able to decode them.

No. You pay for a title or an album, you download it and you use it with as many of your personal computers and other devices as you like, without paying another penny.

There are no technical restrictions whatsoever. iTunes will even transcode the music into other formats for you if you insist.

Quoting planewasted (Reply 4): And yeah, every item you buy that are approved by apple has, compared to other licenses in the industry, huge licensing costs.

$0.99 / track, $9,99 / album standard (there are also more expensive and cheaper ones). Where is that "huge"?

And all that at 256kb/s AAC, which is significantly better than MP3 at that or even higher data rates, and no hidden costs.

You are apparently making your conclusions based on faulty assumptions.

You misunderstand me Klaus. Every time you buy software or hardware that can decode AAC, the manufacturer has paid a license fee for that unit. This fee is of course put on the customer, you, in the end. So why use all these meaningless formats, when there are free alternatives? There is a reason why they don't sell ogg och flac files, and that's pure monetary reasons.
Apple, Microsoft and others are screwing you on money for something that is available for free.

And about the huge fees, I mean products that interface with Apples products. IPod docks and such.
Microsoft are still the masters of license fees, but Apple is catching up. And they are usually much more expensive.


There are LOTS of hidden costs.
I work in the industry...

[Edited 2011-10-19 12:56:30]

Quoting planewasted (Reply 6): You misunderstand me Klaus. Every time you buy software or hardware that can decode AAC, the manufacturer has paid a license fee for that unit. This fee is of course put on the customer, you, in the end.

I see. It's about the pure ideology of open source and everything for free instead of actual problems which actually affect people...

Quoting planewasted (Reply 6): So why use all these meaningless formats, when there are free alternatives? There is a reason why they don't sell ogg och flac files, and that's pure monetary reasons. Apple, Microsoft and others are screwing you on money for something that is available for free.

From a purely ideological point of view it may appear that way, but in reality things are much more complicated than that.

Just some of the aspects there:

- ogg is technically mediocre and ill-conceived: It barely matches AAC in encoding quality and efficiency, but it is significantly more difficult to decode in hardware, and even then doing that requires much more battery power in mobile devices. The disregard for such mundane aspects in its design has been one of the reasons for its lack of market success.

- That ogg was "free" of patents is not much more than a thus far untested claim, bearing considerable risks to particularly any commercial entity attempting to rely on it since nobody will defend them against patent litigation, as a license for any commercially licensed product will do, on the other hand. So there simply is no viable business case for using ogg, neither for users nor for manufacturers nor for content distributors.

- Users care a lot more about how well stuff actually works in practice (including interoperability) than about a few pennies of licensing cost contained in the purchase price of their device (it's much less than a Dollar in any reasonably selling consumer product and a negligible amount indirectly paid with content encoded in the format).

- Due to the technical disadvantages, legal risks and lack of market interest, there are next to no ogg decoders in any commercially available hardware which in turn makes it uninteresting to encode any content in this format.

Yes, I see the attraction to developers of open source software (as long as they're managing to fly under the radar of patent holders in the field). But that's it.

Nobody else has any serious interest in ogg, and it's not difficult to see why that is: People who by their own profession are unwilling to pay for anything are not a force in the market by definition.

Flac is effectively interchangeable with other lossless formats (and obviously losslessly convertible), but its undefended status is similar to ogg.

Quoting planewasted (Reply 6): And about the huge fees, I mean products that interface with Apples products. IPod docks and such. Microsoft are still the masters of license fees, but Apple is catching up. And they are usually much more expensive.

Apple products and officially licensed third-party peripherals sell under one premise: That they're significantly less painful to use than most other products (and often even a joy). And as long as people see these products fulfilling that promise, they are (mostly) gladly paying the price it costs to get the products performing that way.

There's no magic and no "mind control" at work there – simply a deal which both sides see as mutually beneficial, with elevated prices being paid for elevated quality.

Anybody who believes the two sides to be out of balance is welcome to buy something else. But more and more people seem to come to the conclusion that these products are indeed worth their prices.

Quoting planewasted (Reply 6): There are LOTS of hidden costs. I work in the industry...

So do I.

And I don't know about you, but when I'm doing decent work, I expect decent compensation for it, too.

These costs are not "hidden". You always see aggregate product prices which are to be compared to other aggregate product prices. And neither AAC nor ogg make any noticeable difference there.

"Saving" on every bit of commercial effort being put into a product will in the end give you a product which does indeed noticeably lack that effort. And those products tend to end up in the bargain bins, if anywhere at all.

I don't want to litter this thread more with this. But I don't agree with you Klaus. Ogg is used commercially, Spotify for example. It does not use notably more battery in my Phone. And my opinion, and many others, is that companies come up with their own standards mostly to earn money, not to serve their customers.

Quoting Klaus (Reply 3): The AAC format they use is the official successor standard of MP3

Klaus, when you say "official successor", who/what has made it official? Is it going to be the de facto standard used by all, if not most?

By the way, I'm not challenging you on this assertion. I'm actually trying find my way through the universe of products and format and settle on one standard to use going forward as my collection is growing. I've never been an Apple user, except for years ago when iTunes first came out, but I'm exploring my options now.