KEY POINTS:
Vodafone in the United Kingdom has named the price it thinks people are willing to pay per week to download as much music as they want £1.99 (NZ$5.84).
Musicstation is the mobile giant's attempt to get the music subscription model off the ground - it is being launched with a range of high capacity (8GB) music phones in the run up to Christmas.
The idea is that Vodafone subscribers pay £1.99 a week to download all the songs they want to their mobiles.
If they unsubscribe from the service, they lose access to all the songs they've collected.
The service is cross-carrier so you can subscribe if your mobile account isn't with Vodafone and for £2.99 per month, you can download songs to your computer.
It seems like a reasonably progressive model - it's laced with DRM of course, so you can't give the music you've downloaded away.
But are people willing to embrace the subscription model? I'm skeptical.
I know a few people who subscribe to receive a number of monthly music downloads from Emusic.com.
But you'd really need to have eclectic music tastes to make the subscription model pay for you considering that most people have mined the musical back catalogue for what they want already.
I think the success of Musicstation will come down to how well these high-capacity music phones integrate with the service.
I could envisage people downloading songs directly to their phones to keep an ever-changing soundtrack playing.
But at the same type of pricing, you're effectively talking about a $24 a month subscription fee.
Would you pay that much per month for all-you-can-eat music available for download directly to your mobile phone? Is the subscription download model the future for the ailing music business?
