Fixing .Mac - Idea 8: Subscription Music

Apple's nebulous .Mac services were introduced in What the Heck is .Mac? In 10 Reasons Why Apple Can Kickstart Web 2.0 I presented why Apple is uniquely poised to actually deliver .Mac services well worth the price of admission. In this series, I'll describe features I think Apple needs to add to their .Mac service to move it from "web hosting and email plus" to a complete suite of services that are valuable, obvious, and will sell themselves to potential .Mac subscribers. Plus, I want to use them!

Idea # 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 : Subscription Music

Borrows Ideas From:

iTMS

Everyone likes stuff for free, so when Apple started giving away a new music track every Tuesday, they found a wide audience interested in downloading whatever Apple’s iTunes Music Store staff had picked out.

The iTunes free music program promotes artists just like radio play does: it introduces the public to a wider variety of music than they might have otherwise known about. It also introduces users to the convenience of downloaded music. Users can try out the iTMS, free and without obligation, and decide if buying music online works for them.

The iTMS crew for each regional music store picks out songs for their target market. If you’re enterprising enough to set up iTunes accounts in different stores, you can actually log onto more than one country every Tuesday and download several different songs for free.

Apple should tie their music promotion into the .Mac service by offering .Mac members additional music tracks and TV programs each week for free. The general public would still get the track or two Apple releases on New Music Tuesdays, but .Mac users would get a special backstage pass that lasted throughout their subscription.

Why Apple Can Deliver this:

Apple can build upon existing services because Apple has (1) the iTMS and .Mac users already, and (2) owns the platforms to roll it out. The system is (3) given away for free, as part of .Mac. Apple knows how to run business both (4) online and (5) face to face, and users (6) trust Apple with their purchases. Further, Apple has proven they can build things that (7) work, are (8) usable, (9) very cool, and (10) will actually get finished.

Here's how it works:

Music subscription would help sell .Mac to iTMS users: join the club, and get lots of regular new music for free. At a track per week, Apple could advertise that .Mac member’s music subscription was worth over half the price of the service. Members would end up with a library of lots of music just by joining .Mac.

This would not only be a great way to add value to .Mac, but it also be a good deal for Apple and the artists who participate as well. Apple and music labels would get additional information on the effectiveness of promoted music, and could experiment with presentation and marketing campaigns on the smaller .Mac market.

Members of .Mac are also an attractive subset of online music users, because they are more likely to spend money on things they enjoy. Additionally, with Hyperbloging, Reputation and a .Macster type network in place, .Mac members would be more likely to talk about and promote the music they like.

Such a community would not only act as free advertising for music acts, but would also encourage labels to produce and promote smaller acts and talent that might otherwise not be marketable to a wide audience.

Labels have unfortunately moved from real market demand to anticipatory marketing, where manufactured music acts are signed up with expensive mega-promotion to sell quantity rather than talent. A promotion directed at .Mac members would create a premarket arena to encourage the creation of music worth talking about, and would reward talent with a proportional degree of promotion, rather than simply shrink wrapping crap with a huge ad budget.

Not a Fake Subscription

Unlike the sham pseudo-subscription music plans offered under Microsoft’s WMA PlaysForSure marketing, downloads would work just like any other iTMS content; .Mac members who don’t renew their subscription wouldn’t have their music vanish like the DRM-destroyed stuff from WMA PlaysForSure-UntilYouStopPaying music stores.

The .Mac Music Subscription would be a real subscription, just like the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, or Beer of the Month Club, where material you receive as a subscriber are yours to keep, even if you stop paying to receive the latest issue.

A music subscription would appeal to a lot of people. No need to pick out every new song you get to hear; you simply get a selection of staff pics every week to download for free, from a range of new music on iTMS.

Bang! Apple could use their iTMS to promote .Mac, and .Mac to promote iTMS. Along the way, they promote new music acts and programs, and users get more stuff for free!

But wait there's more.