Getting in tune with digital music services
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Subscribing versus buying songs
A major front in the digital music war involves whether consumers ultimately prefer to own their music by paying a fee to download a song or an album, or whether they would rather pay an ongoing monthly fee to a service that offers thousands of songs. Apple pioneered iTunes around the purchase model, but other services, such as Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music, offer a subscription service.

Some combine both approaches, where you can subscribe for a flat fee per month and buy songs or albums for an additional fee. ITunes still has, by far, the most users because iPods dominate the MP3-player market. But many consumers with Windows-based players are attracted to subscription-based services, because they offer access to an entire library of music at a fairly cheap rate.

The major downside to subscription services is that if you stop subscribing, you have no music to listen to because you don't actually own any of it. With purchase services such as iTunes and Wal-Mart's music service, you own the music and the right to put it on a certain number of devices regardless of whether you continue to use their services.

"In the long run, the subscription model will probably win out over the sale model," says Bhavnani. "People are getting used to paying a subscription for stuff like DVDs with Netflix, and if the cost continues to drop you'll be able to get access to an incredible variety of music for what you'd pay outright for 10 or 12 entire albums in a year."

Beyer disagrees, although he acknowledges that as a baby boomer he might be on one side of a generational divide with older consumers purchasing music and younger ones following the subscription model.

"In my research of American consumption trends, in terms of technology, I find that we like to own things," he says. "Americans like to collect things, and music is no different."

Content explosion
The amount and types of content available for MP3 players and other devices have exploded in the last few years. Not only have entire record labels made all their artists' music available online, media companies such as NBC are jumping on the bandwagon and offering episodes of some of their most popular shows for video download.

Music videos are widely available online, as are audio books and podcasts. A podcast is a video and audio, or audio file, available on the Internet for consumers to subscribe to, that automatically delivers new content through high-speed Internet lines. Most services offer access to numerous radio stations as well.

Many consumers are buying converters that allow them to play music from their MP3 players over their car stereos. The growing popularity of satellite radio and new devices that allow consumers to store songs from satellite radio to play in their cars, homes and on portable players is pushing music portability to the front of automakers' technology consciousnesses.

"Something that will be reaching the U.S. in the next couple years is a technology that is becoming widespread in Japan," Beyer says. "There, when you buy a new car it comes with a little computer instead of the traditional six-CD changer. So when you buy a car, you'll eventually be able to bring all your music down to the dealer and have it loaded into your car's computer and you'll be ready to go."

Overview of major services
Retailers, content providers and technology companies are rushing to jump on the digital music service bandwagon with new services being launched pretty regularly. Apple's iTunes was the first major retail digital music service.