Music subscriptions: still dead after all these years

I've been writing for years that music subscriptions are a terrible idea because they turn the process of listening to music into a tyranny of too much choice in deciding what to listen to. Well, Napster seems to be demonstrating that PC-based music subscriptions are a dying business, with subscriptions declining month after month. I suspect they will find the same is true in the mobile phone business, but they'll undoubtedly take a few more years to find that out too.

Lesson: just because you have a technology that makes a business model possible doesn't mean consumers will buy your product.

Full disclosure: the author owns stock in Apple, which competes with Napster by selling, not renting, music.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Music rental, Napster, Subscriptions