Unsprung Media

Subscription services like Napster are promoted to music fans as the most cost effective way to enjoy an unlimited amount of music for a flat monthly fee. When the subscriber stops paying the monthly fee, the tracks that the subscriber has collected or bookmarked are no longer available to the user (deleted) until the user reinstates his commitment to pay the continuous fee.

There are two problems with subscription services. The first problem is this: these services may be priced to make consumers happy, but they under compensate the community that makes music. Sure, someone can probably assert a theoretical case whereby if fifty percent of the human population were using a subscription service, every decent contributing artist would make a generous living. However, this best-case scenario is based upon assumptions that are absolutely unobtainable. The reason that this scenario will never come close to realization is due to the second major problem with music subscription services.

The second serious problem with music subscription services is the failure of these services to account for the total end-user cost of obtaining a single track. The real cost of obtaining a track is not the pennies that subscription services charge, or the .99 cents that download services like iTunes charge. The real cost of obtaining a track is the value of the time it takes to discover a new track plus the purchase price of the track.

The value of the time it takes to find a new song that you like is actually more valuable to most consumers than the retail cost of the track. This explains why a far greater percentage of the population prefers to own the music they consume. The retail cost of loosing your music is one thing, but the time value of loosing the collection you amassed during so many music safaris is priceless.

It seems like the best solution to the collection-disappearance problem would be to offer a bookmarking service that enables any subscriber to easily move his song collection to any other music platform in the marketplace. After all, nobody wants their song collection inescapably tied to one company. The music subscription service providers only have to look at how phone number portability in the telecom industry has helped ease consumer concerns, as well as to drive new service activations. It should be clear that a similar service for songs would benefit everyone.