Tech Update

The iTunes Music Store has just surpassed its first 5 billion song downloads. Every single song, being bought by one of its millions of customers. If all of those customers had access to every single song ever released to the store. Apple would go broke. When iTunes was first released in 2001, its main goal was to provide an easy access to a catalog of music, for users to fill his or her iPod with. The customer was to pay $.99 per single or about $9.99 per album. Music lovers everywhere started downloading their favorite tunes to take with them on their iPod, saving money by not having to buy the full album with songs you would never listen to. If Apple were to release a music subscription service, the price would have to be very steep, or their would be some gigantic restrictions set upon the consumer, or else Apple itself would start taking huge loses. Think about it, if Apple were to release a music subscription based service, they would probable charge anywhere from $10 to $20 a month. Music lovers with that kind of money would love this service where they can download as many songs as they would like. Two full albums, and iTunes begins to loss money. The other customers who occasionally buy one to two songs a month, would be either stuck with a subscription based service where they would spend hundreds of dollars and not being able to take advantage of the service. If Apple were to release a subscription based music service for the iTunes music store, they would have to continue offering the pay by song download method to keep the majority of their customers happy. The small portion of the consumers would more than take advantage of the system while the others keep it the way it is. More songs from iTunes would end up on file sharing websites since they would be allowed to download as many songs per month as they wanted. Apple would lose money the instant this service started. What do you think? Will Apple innovate a new plan that keeps them on top of the industry while still keeping profits or will they not even consider such a plan? Post your thoughts in the comments!