[Sigia-l] Buy or rent?

[Todd R.Warfel]

One other thing to consider: When it comes to music services, some 
customers prefer subscription because it offers them access to a "much 
larger music library" than purchase models.

Case in point, a friend of mine who's pretty big in the music scene has 
a subscription to Rhapsody. When having a discussion of Rhapsody vs. 
iTMS, she comments that the main thing she likes about Rhapsody better 
is that she has access to more music than iTMS can (currently) provide 
her.

She has a couple of streaming music devices at her house, which allow 
her to stream Rhapsody to speakers in two different rooms. However, 
these things rarely work properly. Typically, it's 1) Try and connect 
2) Failed to connect 3) Reboot the Netgear music streaming device 4) 
Repeat 3-6 times before either it works, or she simply gives up and 
puts on a CD.

So, I recently put a couple of Airport Express devices around her house 
to allow her to stream from iTunes. This works nearly every time. 
However, one of the AE would have to be rebooted every once in a while, 
but less often than the Netgear/Rhapsody device. Apple recently 
released an update to the AE software that fixed this. So, now it's a 
moot point.

I've noticed in the past couple of weeks a weening off of Rhapsody and 
using iTunes to stream more and more.

Now, I've pointed out that you can't take Rhapsody with you - this is 
the biggest advantage to the purchase model. She's hoping someone will 
change that. I think MS's DRM model allows you to take the rented music 
w/you - anyone know?

On a related note, I recall seeing a newscast one night several months 
ago where they spoke about a decrease in Movie rentals - it seems that 
more and more people of our generation (baby boomers and below) are 
purchasing DVDs instead of renting them. The reported contributed this 
to some research that shows that these generations are becoming more of 
an own and less of a rent generation.

On Feb 3, 2005, at 9:20 AM, James Melzer wrote:

> Subscription/renting has become the dominant model for
> library/research information systems. Dialog, Lexis, Elsevier, and
> others rent journal articles and other info sources to libraries for a
> monthly or annual fee.

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
MessageFirst | making products easier to use
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