Thursday, April 12, 2007

Apple may charge for itunes?


Is Apple considering making itunes a subscription based application?

That is what the CEO of Intent Media Works is telling CNNMoney that Apple is "is seriously considering a subscription offering" for itunes based on what's he heard in "meetings with people from Apple."

This would come as a surprise to me due to how itunes has smashed all other subscription based media players. I would think that Apple would think better of this and not do it. But it may be something that they may change in the future.

continue reading here.

3 comments:

Mike.com said...

I haven't read the article, but I heard that this may be due to the new movie content. AppleTV with an iTunes subscription service would make it painless to order movies online and send them by WiFi to your home theater. So while this may seem hypocritical of Apple, the movie content may require a new way of doing business. I'd rather use this service than Netflix. Instant gratification.

Anonymous said...

I would say it goes (in my humble opinion) beyond a hypocritcal act. I would call it awfully close to bait & switch.

Anonymous said...

I thought about it some more, and in my opinion, if Apple kept the currrent development of a free iTunes and allows for a "Premium Upgrade" to a higher tier product; then I have no problem.
But to build up trust for two years getting loyal subscribers who have their audio library tied up with Apple and then create a new service Charge for the iTunes software and trap all it's former customers who may or may not want the new feature, well that's another story. I think that is what comes close to bait & switch.

I'm confident though that Apple will do the right thing. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't recall them ever going out of their way to screw it's customer base.