14 DAY TRIAL // iTunes is doubtlessly the most popular music downloading service on the Internet, but the pressure of its rivals (mainly Napster, but not only) makes the experts wonder whether iTunes would soon switch to "lending" music services, instead of selling the downloaded items, like in presently does.
The popularity of legal music downloads is constantly increasing, but no market research showing the preferred Internet music distribution service method is currently available.
Presently, there are two music distribution methods and the companies involved in this business are either allowing customers to download an unlimited number of songs for a monthly fee (Napster and others), or to pay for each download (like iTunes).
Some experts, such as the Jupiter Research team, believe that, by 2009, the number of those preferring a monthly fee for music downloads will substantially surpass the number of those preferring the paying per download method.
But, even though the services like Napster become more and more aggressive, it's still hard to believe that iTunes will go for the montly fee, especially since Steve Jobs affirmed on many occasions that, on his opinion, people prefer to own the music rather than renting it.
If Napster and the similar services launched by Sony and Microsoft are still not perceived by iTunes as a veritable threat, the surprise might arise from Yahoo!, which is thought to launch, in collaboration with MusicNet, a new music downloading service. The success of Launchcast, which reached in this January 2.2 million users,was probably the final argument for Yahoo! to enter on the music downloading market.
Even though the launching of new service seems certain, Yahoo! and MusicNet made no comment yet about it.