Subscription Based Music Services

NYT:

“Rdio and similar start-ups are reinventing a concept pioneered earlier this decade by Rhapsody, a service majority-owned by RealNetworks, and the tamed version of Napster, now owned by Best Buy. A few hundred thousand Rhapsody and Napster subscribers pay monthly fees of around $15 for the right to stream an unlimited number of songs, at any time, from their PCs and mobile devices.

But with modest membership growth at best, neither service has managed to challenge iTunes, with its many millions of users — or enticed music lovers from pirating music. Moreover, Yahoo, AOL and MTV Networks have abandoned their own music subscription efforts.”

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Here is my (obvious) question:

Will any subscription based music service be able to find an audience if the songs cannot be transferred to an iPod?

The next question is, can they get the labels to approve that? If they can, will they be able to make any money doing it?

Here are the various players:

Rdio
Spotify
Imeem
Mog
Orchard
Ioda
Pandora
Rhapsody

Reader suggestions:

Grooveshark
Lala
emusic
Live365

I have no preferences with these — I occasionally use Pandora (but I am not a convert yet)  Mog looks interesting.

Anyone have much insight into these?

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Source:
Still Hoping to Sell Music by the Month
BRAD STONE
NYT, 10/14/09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/technology/internet/14music.html

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