After acquiring some information from Dailytech, I’ve learned that Sony BMG is developing an all-you-can-download buffet style subscription program. The files will be DRM-free, possibly even after the subscription has canceled. That’s the absolutely galling part – could someone march right in there for a month and download all the songs from the Sony BMG catalog, and then cancel and never pay another dime. …Right?
Source: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/7696_large_Rolf%20Schmidt-Holtz.jpg
I think that it’s definitely a shame we’ve underestimated CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz and the entire Sony team to such an extent. If they ever plan to use such a service, I highly doubt that the downloads per month (or day) would be unlimited – perhaps they will adopt a similar pricing scheme as eMusic’s. Basically, you pay a certain price for 25 downloads per month, a higher price for a higher number. Not a bad idea, to be honest.
The only question is if this is going to be implemented into the MusicPass program. And to this, I really have no idea – on one hand, MusicPass looked as though it was an alternative to just CDs, but now I think it’ll be easy to spread the branding to an online store. I hope that they have success with this DRM-free idea, as it’s going to be the way of the future. No strings attached.
