Zune Marketplace vs. ITunes Pay Per Song

By Flummery
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Flummery

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Posted

Here is why I believe that a subscription model for music, such as the Zune Marketplace is better than a pay per song model like ITunes. This is my own opinion, so take it as you wish.

I currently pay about $15.00/month for unlimited songs/downloads on Zune Marketplace.

In one year that equals to $180.00

I have been signed up for about 2 months and have on my computer:

- 58 Artists

- 1806 Songs

I have probably actually downloaded twice this much but didn?t like the artist or the music so I ended up removing them.

I actually listen to probably only about 500 of these songs on a regular basis and they actually exist on my Zune all the time.

All of this for only $15/month

Now if we compare that to if I had been using ITunes and their pay per song structure.

-1806 Songs * .99/song = $1787.94

$1787.94/2months = $893.97

$893.97/2months = $446.99 per month ? YIKES

We could take that $1787.94 and apply back into how many months of service that would be on ZM:

$1787.94/$15month subscription on ZM = 119 months

119months/12months = 9.91 years of a subscription based plan.

In my own personal opinion from my pretty straight forward math (which I?m pretty sure is correct), I very clearly see why a subscription is better than a per song payment method in my personal case.

I could have a subscription on ZM for almost 10 years for the cost of what 1806 songs would cost me on ITunes. How many people regularly listen to even just 50% of the songs you had from 10 years ago? Very very few.

Why would anyone want to brag that they paid for ?Ice Ice Baby? for 99 cents and that they get to keep it forever? Not me that?s for sure.

Doesn?t a subscription that allows you to listen to thousands of songs and artists, lets you get the latest and best songs available at any given time for only $15 a month make so much more sense? And yet if you really want to you still have the option to buy a song for 99cents.

Subscription wins hands down for me.

Collaborator

CNSBarry

Posted
Posted

But, if you stop subscribing then you lose all the music. If (very, very unlikely i know) Microsoft went out of business then your subscription would stop and you'd no longer have access to your music.

At least with Pay Per Song you've still got access to your music.

Grand Master

gigapixels Veteran

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  • Veteran
Posted
But, if you stop subscribing then you lose all the music. If (very, very unlikely i know) Microsoft went out of business then your subscription would stop and you'd no longer have access to your music.

At least with Pay Per Song you've still got access to your music.

In addition, I belive it's all down to how much music you purchase per month... It may be a better value for somebody like myself to do pay-per-song because I usually just buy the actual CD, and very rarely buy the music online. So pay-per-song works for me because I don't spend that much for music online.

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TokyoKiller

Posted
Posted
But, if you stop subscribing then you lose all the music. If (very, very unlikely i know) Microsoft went out of business then your subscription would stop and you'd no longer have access to your music.

At least with Pay Per Song you've still got access to your music.

That wouldn't be the issue if DRM is removed now will it? (Putting the latest rumor in mind about MS removing DRM.)

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Flummery

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Assassin-x

Yeah I understand that there could be the issue of the company shutting down, that would suck on that account. But what happens if Apple went out of business and stopped making Ipods, it puts you in the same position.

I agree that if I stop subscribing I would lose my music as well, but that is why I mentioned the whole "Ice Ice Baby" reference and being able to have the subscription for 10 years before meeting the same cost at a per song basis. If I stop subscribing it's probably because I don't really want the music anymore because it's not important to me. HOwever lets say two years down the road I'm like, man I want my music back, I can sign up again, as long as I at least keep the music files on my computer it will find them and sync them back up to my account and I'm good to go again, wouldn't even have to redownload them.

What happens to you if your hard drive crashes that had all your music on it? From what I understand Apple will only let you re-download your songs once maybe twice at no extra cost or something like that. ( I don't know for sure though)

Still at a fraction of the cost of payin per song.

Pixels:

I can see the pay per song working for some people such as yourself, but I would guess a majority of people want a lot of songs, hence why people complain that they want bigger hard drives in mp3 players.

In my particalur case I like having alot of songs and paying for them one at a time is to pricey for me.

Grand Master

gigapixels Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
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Pixels:

I can see the pay per song working for some people such as yourself, but I would guess a majority of people want a lot of songs, hence why people complain that they want bigger hard drives in mp3 players.

In my particalur case I like having alot of songs and paying for them one at a time is to pricey for me.

No, I have no doubt it works great for you. I'm just saying it can't be a blanket statement... I have a ton of music, I just like buying the actual CDs instead of downloading.

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Flummery

Posted
  • Author
Posted
No, I have no doubt it works great for you. I'm just saying it can't be a blanket statement... I have a ton of music, I just like buying the actual CDs instead of downloading.

Yeah didn't mean to have it be a blanket statement, but I'm also comparing ZM vs Itunes, and never mentioned comparing it to actualy buying CDs as a 3rd option.

Cheers.

Rookie

Sweet N Sour

Posted
Posted
Here is why I believe that a subscription model for music, such as the Zune Marketplace is better than a pay per song model like ITunes. This is my own opinion, so take it as you wish.

I currently pay about $15.00/month for unlimited songs/downloads on Zune Marketplace.

In one year that equals to $180.00

I have been signed up for about 2 months and have on my computer:

- 58 Artists

- 1806 Songs

I have probably actually downloaded twice this much but didn?t like the artist or the music so I ended up removing them.

I actually listen to probably only about 500 of these songs on a regular basis and they actually exist on my Zune all the time.

All of this for only $15/month

Now if we compare that to if I had been using ITunes and their pay per song structure.

-1806 Songs * .99/song = $1787.94

$1787.94/2months = $893.97

$893.97/2months = $446.99 per month ? YIKES

We could take that $1787.94 and apply back into how many months of service that would be on ZM:

$1787.94/$15month subscription on ZM = 119 months

119months/12months = 9.91 years of a subscription based plan.

In my own personal opinion from my pretty straight forward math (which I?m pretty sure is correct), I very clearly see why a subscription is better than a per song payment method in my personal case.

I could have a subscription on ZM for almost 10 years for the cost of what 1806 songs would cost me on ITunes. How many people regularly listen to even just 50% of the songs you had from 10 years ago? Very very few.

Why would anyone want to brag that they paid for ?Ice Ice Baby? for 99 cents and that they get to keep it forever? Not me that?s for sure.

Doesn?t a subscription that allows you to listen to thousands of songs and artists, lets you get the latest and best songs available at any given time for only $15 a month make so much more sense? And yet if you really want to you still have the option to buy a song for 99cents.

Subscription wins hands down for me.

Yes but you are only 'renting' those songs, give up the subscription and the music won't play.

Explorer

Flummery

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Yes but you are only 'renting' those songs, give up the subscription and the music won't play.

You are right, and I have said that several times, the point your missing is that I could have a subscription for 10 years for the cost of buying each song individually. In those 10 years I could download literaly millions of songs/artists and listen to anything I wanted.

But if I had paid for each song indvidually, I'd only get 1806 songs for $1787.94. That's it, nothing more nothing less. Do you want to listen to the same songs for 10 years? I doubt it.

Mentor

InternalStorm

Posted
Posted

CD's can be had for a good price if you do your shopping. I buy a lot of used stuff on eBay for ridiculous prices, like just over $100 shipped for around 30 CD's. They aren't new releases but you get the lyrics/CD for the car/rip as you please to MP3 format. Even if you buy new in a store, it's close to paying for it on iTunes, but you get DRM free and the actual piece of plastic and cover art. I also do download from certain "sources" but for the stuff I really enjoy I always want to have the CD version of it.

So really for my purposes I don't need to use a subscription format if I use a combination of the above, but I can see how a subscription is a much better deal, and if the company goes out of business, just pay for another subscription based plan from somewhere else and get the stuff all over again!

Grand Master

+Mirumir Subscriber¹

Posted
  • Subscriber¹
Posted
You are right, and I have said that several times, the point your missing is that I could have a subscription for 10 years for the cost of buying each song individually. In those 10 years I could download literaly millions of songs/artists and listen to anything I wanted.

But if I had paid for each song indvidually, I'd only get 1806 songs for $1787.94. That's it, nothing more nothing less. Do you want to listen to the same songs for 10 years? I doubt it.

Subsciption is cool if they remove DRM and let you keep the files. Otherwise, in 10 years you will have spent $1800 without having anything tangible.

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