I can’t imagine buying songs for $.99 each.

I’m a longtime subscriber of Yahoo’s Unlimited service, which costs me around $5/month (it went up a couple bucks recently though), when you buy a year in advance.

I agree with many of the comments above, but I’ll add the following:

1. It’s not for everyone, but it is great for many.

Some people are happy to only buy one album or a few singles every few months. Their taste in music rarely changes and they’re okay with that.

I happen to have a continuing thirst for more music– with Yahoo, I can queue up Eric Clapton’s entire discography on a whim and give it a whirl without actually paying for each album– the cost of doing this any other way would be the equivalent of several years worth of unlimited subscription fees.

When a friend of mine says “you gotta listen to this artist”, I can have the full album playing in seconds, at no additional cost.

As you can imagine, this also comes in handy when deejaying a party.

So to many people, I think complete freedom to access music on demand is significant– and it’s not to be discounted that the music can be streamed online. I really shouldn’t have to keep music for every occasion on my hard drive, where my Christmas albums languish for 11 months at a time, and my dance music gathers hard drive dust on all but the occasional party day.

2. People get too attached to the short term. Yes, you don’t own the music. But if you buy so much as one album per month, your monthly budget for music consumption for the foreseeable future is at least $12-$15/month.

In one form, you get a single album per month. In another form, you get unlimited access to everything.

I will happily pay <$20 a month, every month, for the rest of my life, if it means I can have unlimited access to everything. This goes for movies, too. Once somebody gets there.

3. You can still count on the old tried-and-true filesharing methods. I have an iPod, but I don’t rotate new music onto it very often, so for my personal needs I’m okay with resorting to old school methods of obtaining music (also note: Yahoo sells these tracks at a discount to Unlimited subscribers).

Again, doesn’t work for everyone, and I can understand why many people would be opposed to this– especially in the DRM-hating world we’re in.

But I think we’re still only beginning to free ourselves from the mentality of buying and owning a physical piece of intellectual property.

Whew– I think I need to start my own blog.

I appreciate the insight about how you use Yahoo music.

Why do I do it? It works out to $6, and I can listen (full-length) to songs from zillions of artists, in a ton of different genres. A friend’ll say, hey, I just bought such-and-such album and most often I can pull it up on my Yahoo music service and listen to it without paying an extra cent.

It’s the flexibility, the discovery. Can’t compare this to Internet radio (as much as I really really love, for instance, Pandora); Yahoo and Napster paid services let you grab music on-demand. Oh, and download it (albeit tethered) to my laptop, where I can listen to it on a bus, on a plane, etc., without any internet access.

That’s a hell of a lot of pleasure for such a little fee every month. And before you accuse me of bein’ a Napster or — even funnier — a Yahoo shill, well… I work for Google, okay? :P

Oh, and hey, would I rather the music be unDRM’d and would I *still* continue paying $6 a month? Yes, and yes, without a doubt.

As to why people use it? No idea, I’m on a Mac, so it’s not even an option for me.