Plum Crazy

Napster ran an intriguing ad during the Super Bowl. To fill an iPod completely with 10,000 songs, it would cost $10,000 to buy songs from iTunes. Napster, by comparison, costs $15 per month for unlimited access to songs. Of course, there are two central flaws in Napster's claim: that iPod owners don't have access to free music through their own or other people's collections and that there is no difference between an iPod and other MP3 players. Still, it would seem to make sense for Apple to offer its own subscription service.

Personally, I prefer to own the music, so I'm not interested in the Napster rental model. I wonder how many other people will be. At some point, if you decide to discontinue your subscription, you own nothing and your mp3 player will be empty (at least of Napster-downloaded songs), despite the $15/month you were paying up until that point. It will be interesting to see if it succeeds. I think it has potential, but I see it as complementary to the iTunes (and others) purchase model.

Not that anyone I know of has filled their mp3 player with music purchased from a download service, which is where Napster's commercial ultimately falls apart. Most people with mp3 players have pretty extensive CD collections (at around 15 bucks a pop), so although the music wasn't free, it is a sunk cost. Therefore, both the download by purchase and rental models are ultimately complementary to the CD. What will be really interesting will be seeing what will ultimately replace music on disc (by which I mean both CDs and music DVDs).