Last week Apple announced the updates to it’s iPod line, including a brand new 120 gigabyte iPod classic. I was kind of surprised to see that actually. I mean seriously, at $0.99 a song, who could ever fill that up? Of course people are ripping their old CD libraries as well, but as the marketplace moves primarily to digital downloading, who expects us to fill up a 120 gig iPod one song at a time?
Think about it. According to Apple’s website, the 120 gigabyte iPod Classic will hold 30,000 songs. That means it could theoretically cost you THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS to fill up that iPod.
Let me state that again in case you missed it: THIRTY. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. Regardless of whether or not you buy the music on Amazon, or iTunes, whether it’s DRM-free or not, the result is the same. That’s an astronomical amount of money to pay for music. Chances are that’s more than your CAR cost you. And, if you aren’t smart, a hard drive crash, or a change in the DRM scheme at Apple could theoretically make that purchase vanish into thin air.
(note: Yes, I am aware you can fill it with more than just music, but Let’s just discuss music for the moment.)
Even establishing a relatively small collection of music, perhaps a couple thousand songs, could run you well in the thousands of dollars. Point being, if you are ANY sort of music aficionado, you’re going to spend a pretty good chunk of your yearly income building that collection with a by-the-song model.
Do the math. You’re wasting your money! Do you really want to spend that amount just so you can listen to Mister Mister on the drive home? I highly doubt it. So why are you doing it?
Simple, because Apple and it’s iPod have dominated the marketplace, and made itself the “obvious” choice. Much like the Band-Aid and Q-tip of generations past, The iPod has become SYNONYMOUS with the mp3 player. Whether you own a Creative Zen, a Zune, or Sansa, everyone just says, “What do you have on your iPod?”.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t alternatives. My favorite of them is the Zune. Sure it gets made fun of in the mainstream press, but that doesn’t hide the fact that the Zune Pass is one of the best deals in online music.
For $14.99 a month, the Zune Pass allows you to download an unlimited amount of music to up to 3 Zunes per account. You have access to MILLIONS of dollars worth of music, any time you want. Of course, when you stop paying, much like your cable bill, the music stops flowing. But let’s look into why that might not be as much of a deal-killer as it seems.
For most people, I don’t think that spending $14.99 a month on music is terribly expensive. I know people who go to the the discount cd store once a month and spend well over $75 each time. And considering that you can have up to 3 players per account, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that 3 people wouldn’t spend around that much on music per month.
So let’s say you decided to stick with a Zune Pass for a year. How much would it cost you?
$179.88. About the same as 12 physical Cds, 18 Albums on iTunes, or 179 individual songs on iTunes.
So Comparably, you could either FILL three 120 gigabyte Zunes with 30,000 songs each. A total of 90,000 individual songs (if you only filled up the devices once) for $179.88, which goes away if you stop paying. Or you could have 179 songs split between 5 iPods, but you “own” the songs.
Spreading the cost over 10 years, a subscription plan at $14.99 a month will still only cost you less than two thousand dollars. Or less than a 2,000 song collection purchased on iTunes.
But you want to OWN your music, not rent it!
The problem with the majority of iTunes music though, is that you don’t REALLY own the song. Itunes Plus songs, you own, because they are DRM free, but the majority of the iTunes library has not yet moved that way. The rest are coated with DRM called FairPlay. This DRM makes sure you can only burn the songs to CD a certain number of times, transfer them between computers a certain number of times, and put them only on a certain number of iPods. So what happens if in ten years Apple decides to shut off the FairPlay servers, or they go with a different type of DRM and stop supporting FairPlay? Your music could stop working, even though you paid for it, and even though you’re SUPPOSED to own it. Will that happen? It’s unlikely of course, but it’s still a possibility.
Thankfully stores like Amazon have solved this for the most part. They offer mp3’s with NO DRM for around the same amount as iTunes. You don’t have to worry about this music ever shutting off, and the quality and selection is nearly as good as iTunes. So far Amazon is a great success. But that isn’t to say that your music is safe from there either.
The problem is that you still really don’t get a PHYSICAL copy of the music. Computer hard drives are finicky things with lots of little moving parts. They age, and they crash. Sometimes you have warning, sometimes you don’t. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of people don’t back up their data, and when something goes wrong. They lose everything. Would you like to lose a $2,000 music collection with the flick of a switch? I certainly wouldn’t. There are ways to complain to customer service to get another download credit for your songs, but it’s complex and annoying, and doesn’t work for everyone, so you really aren’t guaranteed against data loss when you buy from many of these music stores online.
Fortunately, when MY hard drive crashed early last year, I didn’t have to worry about my music library. While I lost some documents and photos (though not many, I back up online.), all I had to do to restore my music was to simply log into my Zune client. In the settings you’re presented with your personal download history, and in one click you can re-download every single song you used to have. I clicked the button, left it overnight and had my entire music collection restored by the time I got home from work the next day. All 136 gigabytes of it.
For me, my subscription music payment is just as much about data security as it is about selection. Not only can I get just about every song I’ve ever wanted to hear, I’m protected if and when I lose my data due to a crash or a virus. I don’t have to worry about burning backup DVDs and squirreling them away, or paying exorbitant fees for hundreds of gigabytes of storage space in the cloud. I just log into my Zune software, and get it all back.
Is everything all roses and happiness though? No. I wish I could use an iPhone or an iPod touch with the service. They’re both fantastic devices, and I’d rather only carry my phone with music on it instead of a separate MP3 player and phone. Don’t get me wrong, the Zune is a great device with awesome functionality and a great UI, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to the iPhone in usability. But if the price I have to pay for not spending thousands on a music collection is to have to carry two devices instead of one. For me, it’s worth every penny.
Tags:
Apple,
iPod,
iTunes,
Microsoft,
Subscription,
Zune 
