Many Apple rumors sites have recently began reporting on the possibility of Apple offering an iTunes subscription option. Many other online music sites have been offering subscriptions for quite some time now but the big one (iTunes) hasn’t yet.
The rumor says that about half of the music currently available on the iTunes music store would be available to subscribers. The pricing would also be incredibly cheap (compared to some others which often charge $15 per month). How does $129.99 per year sound? How about $179.99 per year with MobileMe bundled in?
That comes out to roughly $11 per month for just the music subscription and about $15 a month for the MobileMe bundle. Many say that this subscription offering would be announced in late September, when they normally have their iPod event (and I would agree with them).
But, the question now is will it persuade those pirating music to go legit? My guess is that it wouldn’t. I’ve talked to many people I know that do pirate music and they have said that $10 is too much, they are already getting it for free and have absolutely no restrictions. I think the only way to persuade pirates is to give them MP3s for a low monthly price ($5-10).
I’ve said that a music subscription offering would be awesome but I just don’t know if I consume enough music for it to be economical for me. I am probably only interested in maybe 1 album per month, and since I can buy the CD for about $10 I don’t know why paying for a subscription would be worth it. On the other hand, paying for a subscription would allow me to try a lot more music that I might not have been interested in otherwise.