iTunes Music Subscription

It has been talked about many times, but will the talk actually become a reality? Only time will tell, but some believe it is coming, and coming soon to an iTunes Store near you. Subscription music is found with most music providers, and loved amongst the many users out there. However, there is a price to pay for unlimited music...or should I say, a downfall to unlimited music. You are downloading and download and downloading until your heart is content, and you decided you no longer want to do the subscription thing and you scrap it. The next day, you go to listen to your million music library and - uh oh - NO MUSIC.

That is a problem many users face with unlimited music subscriptions. You are locked on, or you risk loosing all your music. Fortunately, if you are an iTunes user like myself, you own your music and can do whatever you want with it. Although some of the songs are locked (there are ways around that. Shhh!) you still own them. Apple is thinking about finally coming up with a subscription model that may not totally offend you.

It began with an article in the Financial Times that said Apple was in talks with the major labels over bundling an all-you-can subscription plan with iPods. Customers might pay a premium on the devices for access to major label music, possibly for as long they own the device. But unlike any other, they will let you keep a good amount of songs each year, month, week....who knows. Details are sketchy right now. What this means is the price of an iPod or iPhone would be considerably higher than normal.

So the true question comes to mind: Would you pay more for an iPod or iPhone to receive unlimited music? I also wonder about those of us who own the devices already? Who knows what the future holds, but the usual Apple style suggest to me that they will be different from any other whatever they decide to do.