[Ben]

From the article http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-phones/news/2007/11/02/MusicStation-Launched-Exclusively-on-Vodafone/p1


MusicStation is a subscription based music service available at £1.99 a week, but can also be rolled up into monthly contract tariffs, though these start at £43.62. There are 13 compatible handsets at launch but this number will be up to 30 by Christmas, including a Blackberry. The headline launch phone is the touch-screen LG Viewty, of which we will have a full review on Sunday.

...

Of course it would be unreasonable to not point out that the music is only available on your phone, and when you stop subscribing, you no longer have access to any music. A demonstrator said that software that would enable you to transfer tracks to your PC was in development, but considering the tracks are a miserly 48Kbps bit-rate, would you want to? Will this be an iTunes beater? Only time will tell.
Sounds rubbish to me. I wont be buying into it, anyway - I had experience with Napster and can confirm that subscription models are a waste of space.

[3g-g]

Of course it would be unreasonable to not point out that the music is only available on your phone, and when you stop subscribing, you no longer have access to any music.

Hang on! I've a few CDs in my collection, that yeah I've paid for but don't listen to anymore... Is someone going to come round and collect them from me? I find that absolutely scandalous, pay for something then when you stop you can't have the items/goods/services you've quite rightly paid good money for. Shocking!

[Ben]

Yeah, it's the way of the subscription services world and it's exactly why they never caught on the first time around!

Add to that the pitiful bitrate of these tracks and it quickly looks like a waste-of-time exercise. I'd rather buy two or three high quality tracks a week on an iPhone or iPod touch that I can burn an unlimited number of times and play on a PC and a Mac, keeping those tracks forever, rather than spending a fortune renting a music collection for the rest of my life.

[Hands0n]

Hang on! I've a few CDs in my collection, that yeah I've paid for but don't listen to anymore... Is someone going to come round and collect them from me? I find that absolutely scandalous, pay for something then when you stop you can't have the items/goods/services you've quite rightly paid good money for. Shocking!

I think we are seeing the beginnings of an entirely new model of marketing software whereby ownership will becoming nothing more than a distant memory. In fact, we don't truly own anything but the media upon which it is delivered (CD, DVD, Vinyl etc..). The software content has always been under licence to use - and fairly restrictive at that.

But now we are seeing the ".. to use" licence becoming very much more in yer face so to speak. Up front we are being told in no uncertain terms that we can use the content, but it never truly belongs to us. The volatility of the delivery medium makes it that much easier for the producers (the labels) to snatch it back from us later on.

For my part, as long as it is still legal to buy CDs and MP3 encoders and players I will continue to acquire my [portable] music software that way. I tend to steer a wide berth from any form of DRM where possible - particularly over the wire/air. I only accept it begrudgingly on physical media such as DVD.

So will this strategy by content producers and marketers succeed? We watch and see.