Tuesday 10 June 2008

Subscription based music services


This is an interesting model. Currently two such based services areSrvice Records Co-Op and Marit Bergman's direct subscription service.

This is a great way to hook in micro tastemakers. I.e. long tail djs and bloggers who want to get their hands on the freshest content.

Whilst a shade unethical, there is potential for music bloggers to post exclusive subscription only tracks and generate enough money from advertising to cover the cost of the subscription.

The subscription based model in all likelihood will be hard to scale but is a good way of monetising attention from a small but fervent fanbase.

In other (sort of related) news, this weekend I was lucky enough to be shown a demonstration of Spotify Spotify is an on-demand streaming audio service and right now is just about the slickest thing out there. Cloud computing is the way ahead. Currently its only in beta mode and limited to just 1000 testers. It was first brought to my attention by Martin Thornkvist of Digital Renaissance and Nic Brisbourne of The Equity Kicker Props to Henrik from Physical Interaction Lab for the demo.

2 comments:

galesbury said...

Very good. What about iTunes, is it not an unbundled subscription service given that you pay in micro and cannot transfer music here or there from the itunes lockdown player.... thus this subscitpion loginc / JC

Nick said...

I guess both the similarity with Itunes is that consumers are locked in but in a different way to the subscription services. A way of forcing customer "loyalty," through restricting what they can do with content.