Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Acquiring new music can be a very addictive and expensive hobby. Downloading an album or the new single from that hot new band from iTunes a few times a month can add up quickly. Which is why new subscription services are garnering so much buzz lately - for $5 to $10 a month these websites offer an easy, affordable (and somewhat legal) way to get all the music you want."

I can hear the people inside the Zune offices at Microsoft screaming "We've been doing this for years!?!" as they sob quietly in their cubicles. For whatever reason - likely because it's Microsoft - the Zune Pass option just never managed to gain wide-spread traction. The price probably had a lot to do with it - $15 is too expensive for many people, especially when the competition comes in closer to the $10 price point.

I've personally never really gravitated toward a service like this because my own collection of music is somewhere in the realm of 14,000 songs. When it comes to needing music to listen to, I've got it covered - however, I've shifted from purchasing full CDs to the more common practice of cherry-picking the tracks I want and the growth of that collection has slowed considerably.

The social aspect of these services may be their most compelling feature; I just signed up for a trial of Rdio, a service I'd heard of but hadn't tried, and I'm really impressed with how I can see what others are listening to and explore music in different ways. Yes, Zune has had similar features for a while now, but I've never found the Web-based version of Zune very intuitive or functional. Part of that is the ongoing struggle I have being a Canadian trying to use Zune services. I grew tired of the cat-and-mouse game with the Zune team making it increasingly more difficult for non-supported countries to access Zune goodness. But let's not get started down that road, or I'll be spitting at my screen in no time.

Do you subscribe to a service like Rdio, Spotify, Rhapsody, Zune Pass, etc.?

"Nokia Corp. has announced it will be shutting down its Ovi Music unlimited subscription service in 27 countries. The service - similar to Microsoft Corp.'s Zune Pass - allowed people to pay a set fee to access as much music as they wanted, legally and conveniently. Originally launched with much fanfare in Britain in late 2008, and seen as a major threat to the iTunes dominated market with Nokia securing all four major music publishes [sic], it has seen a sad decline in most markets."

Subscription music is a hard sell, so it's not surprising to see Nokia giving up on it - I have to commend them on getting it all up and running in so many countries in the first place...it's something Microsoft hasn't been able to do with Zune as of yet. Hell, I can't even buy music from the Zune Marketplace in Canada, let alone have a Zune Pass subscription. A key problem with Nokia's Ovi approach was that it locked the music to the handset - I don't think there was a way to get it onto the user's computer. The concept of subscription music is also hard for people to wrap their heads around, even though it's similar to a cable TV subscription.