Given that the iTunes Store does not have a subscription-based model, I have to wonder to what you are referring? I can find no articles at Macworld—except for one from this past March that hinted that Apple might reverse its position on subscriptions—or at Apple.com indicating that users can subscribe annually for unlimited downloads. The only “subscription” offered through the iTunes Store is the season pass for people that download TV shows. Otherwise, Apple has a rental service for movies and music remains buy-only.

As to who listens to music that much or watches that much content, you would be surprised. Any number of people have rather large iTunes music libraries, myself included, as music is more passive entertainment. I can have music playing in the background while doing anything else and being in my late-30s, unlike children or adolescents, I am well past the point of listening to the same few songs ad nauseam; I do have nearly four decades of music exposure.

As to video content, time shifting has been the American norm since VCRs became ubiquitous by the mid-1980s. The iTunes Store television show service is an extension of that as it is a mixture of time shifting and purchasing the DVD in short order. Without paying for a DVR up front or DVD sets later, the users gets the episodes of their favorite show(s) without the chance of recording the wrong thing and for less than the DVD that would not be released until after the season ends. Apple’s movie rentals are simply an alternative to going to Blockbuster.

Where music subscriptions are concerned, I am pretty much in agreement with Apple’s stance, as not a single music subscription service has been all that successful. I can sympathize with dougofthebaci ’s sentiment about poor students, but with the ability to pick and choose songs from the iTunes Store at 99¢ a piece, today’s collect student is much better off than those of us whose only legal options were to either buy the entire album or purchase singles at significantly more than $1.00.

If the Yahoo! subscription fiasco is any indication, the risk of suddenly losing all that music, because one never actually purchased individual licenses, which is what you do when you “buy” music, is an all too real scenario. I own physical media, downloaders own media files and in either instance the collection is retained regardless of what happens to the source from which the music was acquired. I only see a subscription service working in the sense of using it to preview music for later purchase because 30-second previews do not cut it.

Given that streaming is not downloading I do not understand why the iTunes Store and other online storefronts are not permitted to allow the user to audition to the entire song, as I have often run into the situation of think a song is what I am looking for, but the sample is of a portion that does not get the synapses firing. I know the music industry is probably the cause of this restriction because they think everyone outside “the Industry” is a thief, but previews are streamed not downloaded. Anyone that would go through the trouble of capturing a (typically low quality) stream is probably not going to buy the music anyway.

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“Cannot run out of time. There is infinite time. You are finite. Zathras is finite. This is wrong tool.” 2.3GHz Power Mac G5/8GB/2x1TB HDD/OS X 10.4.11/30-inch ACD, 60GB iPod (Color)