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January 10, 2009
iTunes Music Store: The dilemma.
I've been an avid supporter of Apple's iTunes Music Store since the launch on the Windows side in October of 2003. The pricing, along with the ability to play the songs on multiple computers, iPods, etc. has been attractive to me.
When I checked iTunes two nights ago, it showed I had 2700 purchased files over a five year window. While some are episodes of TV shows, it's mostly music. Breaking it down, it's only about $10 a week over the course of the past few years, which is managable (and less than a CD used to cost, on average, before digital services came to pass).
As the service has evolved, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been slowly but surely been making a push to take it a step further and remove those restrictions. He finally got what he wanted, and now the majority of music on iTunes will be free of restrictions.
Part of the change gives consumers the option to upgrade their previously restricted files to an unrestricted version, with the added bonus of having a higher-quality file, which should boost sound quality. To do this, Apple is charging what sounds like a reasonable fee of 30 cents per song, 60 cents per music video (which upgrades the audio quality, but not the video quality), or, if you bought a whole album, 30% of the current going rate for the album's price.
Here's the catch: you have to upgrade all of the songs available at that particular point, or not at all.
When I checked the upgrade page two nights ago, I had 940 songs already available for upgrade; that rose to 983 by last night. You can do the math, but I was close to $250 for the upgrade as it stood last night. That's not cheap, and since you can't cherry-pick, it's an all-or-nothing situation.
People are griping over the price, as well as the all-or-nothing setup of the program, and that's valid. Some will do it because they see a benefit. It's a solution for those who want it badly enough, and I'm considering it (although I'll have to tuck some money aside to make it happen, not easy in today's state of affairs).
But here's a problem I personally have, and it's not covered at all in the articles I've seen on the subject thus far. I have Comcast. Comcast recently rolled out a bandwidth limit of 250GB a month for accessing the Internet. Exceed the limit too many times, and you can be booted off their service for a year. To make it even more cloudy, they have yet to offer a way to monitor this, and almost weren't going to at all, although it looks like one might be here soon.
I've had Comcast's service for over a year now, and have been pretty happy with how things have gone with them. The connection is fast, and provides me with what I need to get work done at home. But the limit means if I want to upgrade my library, I'm using a not-insignificant part of my limit to do this, because of the all-or-nothing nature of the upgrade.
As of last night, the download size was over 6GB (equivalent to a season of a TV show I purchased last week). It will surely go up by the time I have the money to do it, if I want to do it. This means I'll have to crimp in other areas online just to stay under the limit, or risk being booted.
So, it's a Comcast problem and an Apple problem to contend with. I personally feel $250 is a lot to upgrade my library. Apple has said it is to cover the cost of bandwidth, but why would 6 GB of music cost $250 in bandwidth, while that same 6 GB as a TV show be only $19.99 (which is what I paid for that season)? In the meantime, to get a better version of what I have, I have to limit what I want to do for a few weeks, or wait for the Comcast meter.
I'm sure others of you out there have been using iTunes for awhile. Is a higher-quality file worth the 30 cents per song? Are you considering the upgrade, or have done it? Or are you just going to sit back and enjoy what you already have?
Posted by Josh on January 10, 2009 8:35 PM
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