Will iTunes sell music by monthly subscription?

Immediately after the cult contract with EMI about selling music without installing copyright management software (DRM) on the iTunes online store, public opinion is on the rise of the possibility that Apple will deploy its business model. Music style subscription.

Still stop at rumors

However, the idea this time is not that of Steve Jobs of Apple. Industry insiders said that the recording giants will come to an agreement with Mr Jobs about switching from retailing 99 cents per song to subscription services like Yahoo Music or Rhapsody.

According to information, Apple has negotiated with Sony BMG, Warner Music and EMI to change contracts for providing copyrighted content to iTunes. Next week, Apple will continue to negotiate with Universal, but temporarily Apple executives have not commented on this.

Record labels against loss of revenue

However, it is clear that all music brands are looking for ways to reduce the decline in music revenue. According to a recent report by Enders Analysis, it is forecasted that global music sales in 2009 will drop to only $ 23 billion, which is 16% lower than last year's revenue and only half of the yearly record $ 45 billion in 1997.

As predicted by this report, the speed of CD revenue reduction will slow down in 2010 because the MP3 market has temporarily stabilized. Meanwhile, the report of the International Federation of Phonographic Industry in 2005 said that digital music sales have doubled to $ 2 billion.

Standard & Poor's rating service said users will welcome Apple's non-DRM music service because they can transfer it from one device to another. This will increase revenue for iTunes but will also make other music player competitors more competitive with Apple. But of course, EMI is just a brand and belongs to the 'smallest' in the giant village.

According to Standard & Poor's, the non-DRM subscription business model is unlikely to work because, although with subscription-based music, customers cannot access music downloads but DRM-free is the danger to be discussed. Because just before the end of the subscription, users can completely copy non-DRM music to another device.

It is likely that Apple will deploy the subscription model

But according to Boyd Peterson, an analyst at Yankee Group, Apple is still likely to consider subscriber-based business models. He explained, in fact, the iTunes online store is not for money but for selling iPods. In other words, iTunes's revenue is mainly from Apple's popular music players.

From there Mr. Peterson said: ' Recalculating, if the subscriber business method and how to build that method help sell more iPods, Apple will win. But one might argue that such a subscription music service is more appealing to a computer than a portable music player because of the inconvenience of uploading music . '

Mr. Peterson did not make predictions about what would be the last thing Apple would do, but mentioned the factor many analysts mentioned during the discussion, which was EMI. In fact, EMI is looking forward to selling DRM-free music, which will create an attractive incentive for iTunes to shift from music retail to subscription to users.

Do Duong