Music Industry Looks to Build Its Own iTunes Competitor

Nina 10-12-2007

Universal Music is looking to join forces with other major record labels to build a competitor to iTunes, according to a report in BusinessWeek. The company is in talks with Song BMG and Warner Music Group to launch a subscription music service called Total Music.

While the success of subscription music services like Napster and Yahoo Music has been minimal compared to the mass adoption of iTunes, Total Music would introduce an interesting new business model: free music. The theory is that with the promise of free music, consumers will buy many more devices from Apple’s competitors, in turn offsetting the costs of the plan.

The price point for subscription music services is already pretty low – under $10/mo in most cases – so whether or not a free service would gain traction remains to be seen. The only way to guarantee mass adoption would be for the record labels to completely cut off iTunes, which they are not likely to do since the service makes up about 70% of all downloaded music.

It has been a rough week for the music industry, with Madonna, Radiohead, Oasis, and others experimenting with disruptive business models. Ultimately, the labels should be thinking about new ways to distribute music the way customers want it, versus trying to improve their margins a few pennies a download by launching yet another music service.

SamiJo

man, everyone has been jumping on this bandwagon lately. Again, I dont see this being all that great if it comes to exist. iTunes rules all and unless they have some major problem then I dont see anything taking its glory

Dream

I'm with Sami on this one. Itunes isn't all that great as far as features but its simple and it works. If I could get away from using it I would, save me tons of space and memory so someone making another one isn't apealing to me at all. I'm still waiting for the day Winamp will fully suport the ipod.

Hsoolien

It's a little too late to cook this golden goose, the only thing people in the business of Music don't like is two things, for the labels less money brought in per album as people buy the singles off them instead of getting all the filler tracks, for the artists, the loss of album integrity which is important to some (and usually the only point that will keep an artist off of tTunes)

Raven

A little late? Hell facebook is having one of these so you know they are way late. Amazon already launch thiers. So unless songs are going to be even cheaper then that say about 25cents a song its going to be pointless.

SamiJo

yes, but you know that everyone thinks they can come up with something bigger and better. thats why so many business fail within the first year and there is a good chance this will be a big fat waste of time and money as well...but if it makes them feel better then go for it. They just need to seem like they are keeping up with things. personally i think that they should try to come up with something new instead of imitating something that already works

seximamita

imitating has become very popular now days, why dont they just come up with there on shit? those new businesses suck now days,,,

gthang28

All I gotta say is if it ain't broke don't fix it.

SamiJo

lol yea i'd have to say that is pretty accurate with all this crap