International Law

Where is Apple's rental service for music?

Blogging for Bits, Saul Hansell asks where is Apple's rental service for music?:

One quick last word on Macworld and what Steve Jobs didn?t do. The technology that enables movie rentals also could enable music rentals ? or, in other words, a music subscription service like Rhapsody.

The technology behind this is that iPods need to have a tamper-proof clock in them so that content can be vaporized after its expiration date. The first models didn?t have this feature; the new ones do.

Mr. Jobs said on stage at Macworld that he didn?t originally support movie rentals because he believes that people want to own content. He has changed his mind about movies, but not about music, at least as far as I can see.

This came up yesterday for me when I had lunch with Ted Cohen, one of the most thoughtful people on digital music. Mr. Cohen has worked for EMI, the big record label. But he has also consulted for the original Napster and, much later, Limewire, makers of the rogue peer-to-peer software. Now he is on the board of Imeem, the advertising-supported music service and social network.

Mr. Cohen sees the world from lots of angles, and like most people I know in the music industry, he believes that subscription services are the best answer to the industry?s problems.

The logic is powerful.

Read why here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on January 18, 2008 (boomark / email).